/^^ 


SPY 


George  Washington  Flowers 
Memorial  Collection 

DUKE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


ESTABLISHED  BY  THE 

FAMILY  OF 

COLONEL  FLOWERS 


THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

Letters  on  the  Policy  and  Inauguration  of 
the  Lincoln  Var. 

WRITTEN  ANONYMOUSLY  IN  WASHINGTON  AND  ELSEWHERE. 

By  EDWARD  A.  POLLARD,  of  Virginia. 

Author  of  "  Black  Diamonds." 


Justum  et  tenacem  propositi  virum, 
Non  civium  ardor  prava  jubentium, 
Non  vultus  instantis  tyranni, 
Mente  quatit  solidA." — Horace. 


RICHMOND,   VA. 

WEST   &  JOHNSTON: 

145  Main  Street. 

1861. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress, 

BY  WEST  &  JOHNSTON, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  Eastern  District  of  the  Confederate 

States  of  America. 


MACFARLANE  *  FERGUSSON,  PRTNTEr-S, 


PREFATORY, 


The  author  of  these  letters,  once  a  Union  man,  as  long  as 
there  was  a  prospect  of  acquiring  and  maintaining  the  con- 
stitutional rights  of  the  South  in  the  Union,  and  of  realizing 
a  hope  of  Christian  peace  and  charity  therein ;  once  averse, 
on  politic  grounds,  to  the  early  movements  of  secession,  as 
offering  a  violent  resource  for  w^hat  he  then  hoped  might  be 
moderately  remedied,  sees  that  Union  now  affected  to  be 
maintained  by  a  despotism,  and  the  former  issue  of  secession 
now  converted  into  one  where  the  right  of  self-government 
is  on  one  side,  and  a  war  of  despotism,  usurped  powers,  com- 
pulsory purposes  and  wanton  atrocities  is  on  the  other. 

In  the  essential  alteration  of  the  issue,  he  can  only  be  for 
the  independence  of" the  South,  when  it  is  no  longer  to  be 
treated  by  its  opponents  on  moral  and  constitutional  grounds, 
but  to  be  contested  by  a  despot's  war;  and  against  <hat  war 
and  that  despot,  who  has  murdered  the  peace  of  his  country, 
he  acknowledges  all  the  feeling  of  opposition  that  a  true  and 
patriotic  and  justly  indignant  spirit  may  offer  for  the  vindi- 
cation of  the  right. 

To  vindicate  the  now  rightful  spirit  of  the  South,  and  to 
strip  despotism  to  its  nakedness,  he  has  written  the  following 
letters,  which  he  hopes  to  continue  for  good.  If  there  are 
liarsh  expressions  to  be  found  in  them,  it  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  he  has  regretted  the  necessity  of  speaking  harsh  words 
of  harsh  things;  and  that  he  will  be  satisfied  to  repent  the 
use  of  censure  and  sarcasm  as  untruthful,  unchristian  and 
unmanly,  only  when  they  are  proved  to  have  been  undeserved. 

Near  WASHiNaTON  City,  J%dij,  1861. 


SECOND  EDITION 


A  portion  of  the  first  edition  of  this  volume,  published  in 
Maryland  without  the  name  of  the  author  or  printer,  was 
sold  in  that  State  and  in  the  District  of  Columbia — as  many 
as  one  hundred  having  been  sold  in  one  day,  by  a  single 
dealer,  in  the  city  of  Baltimore.  The  largest  portion  of  the 
edition  was,  however,  suppressed  and  destroyed  by  the 
author  himself,  under  personal  constraints  of  necessity. 

In  ofiering  a  renewed  edition  of  these  letters  to  the  people 
of  the  Confederate  States,  the  author  claims  for  them,  aside 
from  any  personal  interest,  with  respect  to  the  parties  to 
whom  they  are  addressed,  some  value  as  related  to  the 
historical  literature  of  the  war,  particularly  in  exposing  the 
circumstances  of  its  inauguration,  and  the  policy  which  has 
conducted  it  from  its  beginning  to  the  full  and  precise 
declaration  of  its  objects.  The  volume  of  letters,  from  the 
fall  of  Sumter  to  the  date  of  the  meeting  of  the  last  Congress 
at  Washington,  completes,  in  fact,  what  is  the  most  important, 
because  the  initiatory  part,  of  the  history  of  the  war. 

Richmond,  Va.,  November,  1861. 


xnsriDB2c. 


PAGE. 

I.    Letter  to  President  Lincoln,  written  at  Washing- 


ton, 


9 


IT.    Letter  to  President  Lincoln,  written  at  Washing- 
ton,         17 

in.    Letter  to  President  Lincoln,  written  at  Washing- 
ton,          26 

IV.    Letter  to  President  Lincoln,  written  near  the 

Government, 33 

V.    Letter  to   the   Editor  of ,   written   in 

Maryland, 44 

VI.    Letter  to  Secretary  Seward,  written  in  Mary- 
land,          52 

VII.    Letter  to  President  Lincoln,  written  in  Mary- 
land,         63 

VIII.    Letter  to  Doctor  Tyng,  written  in  Baltimore,. .        75 

IX.    Letter  to  General  Scott,  written  in  Maryland,.  .        85 

X.    Letter  to  Mr.  Everett,  written  in  Maryland, .  .  .        8'.' 


LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 


LETTER  TO  THE  PRESIDENT. 

Washington  City,  D.  C,  April  13,  1861. 
To  the  President  of  the   United  States: 

Sir:  Permit  me  to  address  jou  respectfully, 
but  none  the  less  earnestly ;  for  neither  the 
magnitude  of  the  events  which  happened  this 
day,  nor  the  thoughts  of  a  freeman's  patriotism 
at  any  time,  can  be  satisfied  with  expressions 
concealed  or  softened,  except  to  that  point  of 
respect  due  to  magisterial  office. 

I  can  testify  to  you,  sir,  my  poignant  regrets, 
as  a  lover  of  my  country,  and  even  as  a  Christian 
lover  of  peace,  at  the  collision  at  Sumter.  But 
these  feelings  are  not  without  a  reference  of  my 
judgment  to  where  the  responsibility  for  the  actual 
commencement  of  hostilities  may  lie ;  though  it 
may  be  that  recriminations  cannot  lessen  the  force 


10    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

of  patriotic  regrets,  or  control  the  consequences 
of  what  is  already  accomplished.  I  am  aware, 
sir,  that  the  belligerent  supporters  of  your  Ad- 
ministration counterfeit  a  sense  of  satisfaction  in 
the  plea  of  the  government  acting  on  "the  defen- 
sive"— a  plea  which  you  yourself  have  again 
affirmed  to-day  in  your  reply  to  the  Virginia  com- 
missioners. Unfortunately  for  you,  sir,  the  plea 
is  weakened  by  the  force  of  the  circumstance  that 
the  Government,  in  the  first  instance,  might  have 
avoided  a  conflict,  and  that  the  real  responsibility 
reaches  back  to  the  threshold  of  the  controversy. 
The  policy  of  war  has  been  determined,  neces- 
sarily determined,  not  by  the  bombardment  of 
Fort  Sumter,  but  by  earlier  events,  that  plainly 
and  voluntarily  led  to  this  result  and  furnished  its 
provocation. 

I  should  suppose,  sir,  that  when  a  party  does 
what  he  knows  to  be  a  sure  act  of  provocation, 
it  is  quite  equivalent  to  the  first  blow,  on  the 
principle,  which  is  familiar  to  small  lawyers,  if 
not  to  statesmen,  that  a  man  intends  the  natural 
(and  still  more  strongly,  if  anticipated)  conse- 
quences of  his  acts. 

The  country  will  explore  the  source,  and  there- 


LETTER   TO   THE   PEESIDENT.  11 

fore  the  real  seat  of  the  responsibility.  It  will 
look  back  to  the  primary  cause  of  war,  without 
resting  on  those  secordary  events  which  have  no 
responsible  character  in  themselves,  because  deter- 
mined, procured,  and  looked  for  in  the  very  outset 
of  the  policy  of  which  they  are  the  fruits. 

It  cannot  be  doubted,  sir,  that  you  procured 
the  battle  of  Sumter;  you  had  no  desire  or  hope 
to  retain  the  fort;  you  neglected  to  fight,  until 
every  chance  of  doing  so  with  success  had  passed 
away ;  and  when  at  last  you  did  draw  your  sword 
against  the  sovereignty  of  South  Carolina,  the 
circumstances  of  the  battle,  the  non-participation 
of  your  fleet  in  it,  show  that  it  was  not  a  contest 
for  victory,  but  only  a  shallow  trick  to  entitle  you 
to  the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  an  action  for 
assault  and  battery.  It  was,  sir,  a  trick — a  trick 
to  transfer  easily,  and  under  false  pretences,  the 
matters  in  dispute  between  the  two  sections  from 
the  arbitrament  of  reason  to  that  of  arms.  How 
is  it  that  you  hope  to  make  yourself  not  responsi- 
ble for  this  unnatural  and  shocking  appeal  to 
war?  Was  not  your  formal  intimation  to  the 
Montgomery  Government  that  you  were  about  to 
resort  to  force,  a  challenge  to  arms  ?     Could  the 


12    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

South  have  hecn  expected  to  disregard  such  a 
challenge?  Or,  if,  sir,- you  were  only  amusing 
yourself  with  idle  menace,  are  you  any  the  less 
culpahle  because  you  excited  a  quarrel  by  bully- 
ing instead  of  bravery?  Your  responsibility  for 
the  commencement  of  hostilities,  sir,  is  already  a 
histoi'ical  fact,  and  completes  the  character  of 
your  policy  as  one  of  blunders,  perfidy  and  blood- 
guiltiness. 

Had  you,  sir,  acknowledged  the  independence 
of  the  seceded  States — acknoivledged  it  for  pur- 
poses  of  pacification — you  might  have  accom- 
plished what  war  cannot  only  never  obtain  for 
you,  but  of  what  it  will  surely  rob  you.  You 
might  have  kept  the  support  of  the  intelligent 
and  commanding  portion  of  your  party.  You 
would  certainly  have  secured  the  sympathies  o. 
the  border  States.  You  would-  have  erected  a 
standard  under  which  the  masses  of  Union  men 
in  the  South,  who  never  could  be  expected  to 
rally  under  a  standard  of  war,  could  have  served 
to  a  man.  You  would  have  reduced  the  excitement 
that  threatened  the  Government  to  channels  lead- 
ing to  the  happy  and  naturally  aided  restoration 
of  peace. 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  13 

Now,  "all  is  lost,  save  honor' — not  honor  as 
the  knightly  King  who  wrote  the  phrase  intended 
it,  but  "the  honor"  of  having  "acted  under  the 
forms  of  the  Constitution"  in  a  fratricidal  war! 
The  government  that,  in  the  broad  and  liberal 
enlightenment  of  modern  times,  seeks  to  admin- 
ister constitutional  and  public  law  on  a  policy  of 
punctilios,  is  none  the  less  behind  the  age, 
whether  in  Central  Europe  or  on  the  shores  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  advisers  of  such  courses  of  states- 
manship have  not  read  the  lessons  of  history 
aright — not  oven  the  latest.  You  yourself,  sir, 
must  have  forgotten  the  lessons  even  of  the  Italian 
war.  You  forgot  that  the  kingdom  of  Italy  has 
been  ushered  so  lately  into  existence  through  the 
very  teeth  of  the  treaties  of  Vienna.  You  for- 
get that  Austria  has  reaped  the  fruits  of  the 
policy  recommended  to  you,  and  found  them,  to 
her  cost,  in  insisting  on  the  punctilios  of  those 
treaties — the  most  boasted  part  of  the  "public 
law  of  Europe" — to  maintain  a  "war  footing"  in 
her  Italian  possessions,  and  in  losing  them  by  the 
very  effort  to  make  her  authority  more  secure. 

Look  to  our  own  war  of  independence.  Those 
who   have    despised   and   declaimed   against  the 


14        LETTERS    OF   l^HE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

policy  of  an  acknowledgmentj  or  even  a  quasi 
acknowledgment  (no  matter  what  the  guise  or  the 
purpose)  on  the  part  of  your  Government  of  the 
independence  of  the  seceded  States,  forget  the 
history  and  traditions  of  those  times.  The  policy 
referred  to  does  not  present  the  specious  question, 
as  they  would  have  you,  at  least,  if  not  the 
country,  believe,  of  governmental  honor  or  dis- 
honour— certainly  no  more  than  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  independence  of  the  American 
colonies,  advocated  by  a  portion  of  the  Whig 
party,  presented  the  alternative  of  honor  or  dis- 
honor to  the  British  Crown.  Do  you  suppose, 
sir,  that  Pitt  and  his  noble  coadjutors  were  any 
the  less  Englishmen,  or  patriots,  or  statesmen,  for 
having  attempted  to  resist  the  unnatural  and  un- 
profitable war  which  the  British  government  was 
preparing  to  make  upon  the  seceded  colonies? 
Or  can  it  be  said  in  this  day  (although  it  possibly 
might  have  been  said  formerly  by  tory  papers) 
that  when  Lord  Effingham  and  the  eldest  son  of 
the  Earl  of  Chatham  threw  up  their  commissions 
in  the  army  rather  than  serve  in  a  war  against 
their  colonial  brethren;  and  when  General  Ogle- 
thrope  refused  the  splendid  bribe  of  the  office  of 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDENT.  15 

commander-in-chief  of  the  British  forces  against 
America,  that  they  acted  in  a  traitorous  or  igno- 
ble spirt,  or  bore  the  taint  of  cowardice  upon 
their  names.  For  myself,  I  believe  that  these 
examples  of  generosity,  of  far-seeing  patriotism, 
patient  under  insults  and  clamor  and  misrepre- 
sentation, may  give  the  most  proper  lessons  to 
the  captious  and  belligerent  ^'patriotism"  of  our 
own  day.  Had  Great  Britain  rightly  observed 
them,  she  would  have  saved  herself  the  blood  and 
treasure  of  a  seven  years'  war.  Would  that  she 
had  listened  to  the  appeals  of  the  colonies,  when 
they  declared,  through  the  Continental  Congress 
of  1775,  that  ''they  had  not  raised  armies  with 
the  ambitious  design  of  separating  from  Great 
Britain;  and  that  they  should  lay  their  arms 
down  when  hostilities  should  cease  on  the  part  of 
the  aggressors,  and  all  danger  of  their  renewal 
should  be  removed!"  She  did  not  listen,  and 
she  drove  them  into  independence.  Be  assured, 
sir,  that  your  Government  has  yet  to  have  the 
lesson  enforced  upon  it,  that  the  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence, misconceived  or  not,  is  but  developed 
by  war,  with  the  unavoidable  circumstance  of  in- 
sisting, at  each  stage  of  its  progress,  on  new  and 


16    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

further  demands,  when  the  first  movements  might 
have  well  been  held  in  check  by  the  simple  energy 
of  patience. 

Respectfully, 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER   TO   THE    PBESIDENT.  17 


II. 

LETTER  TO  THE  PRESIDENT. 

Washington  City,  D.  C,  April  16,  1861. 
To  the  President  of  the    United  States  : 

Sir:  Your  proclamation  of  war  is  before  the 
country;  and  the  spirit  that  dictated  it  is  already 
caught  up  in  the  revengeful  exultations  of  Black 
Republican  presses  over  the  prospect  of  blood. 
I  say  blood,  sir;  for  however  you  may  gainsay  it, 
or  jest  about  it,  it  is  the  curse  of  fratricidal  blood 
that  you  have  pronounced,  distinctly  and  irrevo- 
cably. I  say  jest,  sir ;  for  surely  you  did  but 
jest,  when  you  said  in  your  inaugural  that  you 
would  take  the  forts  and  arsenals  (like  Shylock's 
pound  of  flesh)  without  a  drop  of  bloodshed ;  and 
you  did  but  jest,  when,  with  the  cannon  peals  of 
Sumter  on  the  air,  you  protested  to  the  Virginia 
commissioners  that  you  would  modify  your  in- 
augural, only  so  far  as  to  "perhaps  cause  the 
United  States  mails  to  be  withdrawn"  from  the 
seceded  States ;  and  3^ou  do  now  but  jest  when  mus- 


18    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

tering  to  fields  of  civil  war  a  land  force  of  seventy- 
five  thousand  men,  you  yet  proclaim  that  the 
places  of  the  government  only  are  to  be  repos- 
sessed, and  that  "•  the  utmost  care"  is  to  be  taken 
to  "  avoid  any  devastation,  any  destruction  of  or 
interference  with,  property,  or  any  disturbance 
of  peaceful  citizens  in  any  part  of  the  country !" 
Alas,  sir,  have  you  nothing  better  to  offer  to  an 
agonized  country  than  the  same  flimsy  and  harle- 
quin disguises  of  the  trifler,  with  which  you 
tricked  yourself  out  for  the  entertainment  of  the 
crowds  of  idlers  that  watched  your  progress  to 
the  capital  ?  Nothing  very  terrible  to  happen — 
no  devastation — no  disturbances,  and  yet  an 
army  of  seventy-five  thousand  men  called  to  your 
corbmand  for  service  on  land,  and  the  most  mon- 
strous proportions  of  civil  war  already  erected  in 
staring  ghastliness  over  the  whole  country !  Sir, 
this  is  not  ingenuous — it  is  not  appropriate — it 
is,  I  tell  you,  sir,  the  trifling  of  the  jester  in  the 
Chamber  of  Death  ! 

So  far  as  the  legal  aspects  of  your  proclama- 
tion are  concerned,  you  have  violated  the  laws  in 
the  very  appeal  you  make  to  them.  You  have 
usurped  the  power  of  Congress  to  declare  war. 


LETTER    TO    THE   PRESIDENT.  19 

You  have  called  out  the  militia,  not  as  the  act  of 
1795  (which  the  law  adviser  of  your  govemment 
has  vainly  sought  to  distort  for  your  purposes) 
indicates,  in  aid  of  the  civil  authorities,  but  to 
supersede  them,  and  to  inaugurate  war  in  its  most 
deformed  nakedness.  You  have  attempted,  too, 
to  make  the  militia  of  this  district  subject  not 
only  to  the  rules  and  articles  of  war  in  point  of 
discipline^  which  is  the  legal  limit  of  your  au- 
thority, but  to  denude  them  of  the  character  of 
citizen  soldiery,  to  swear  them  by  oaths  to  your 
person,  and  to  constitute  them  into  praetorian 
bands.  This  may  be  military  genius,  and  decision ; 
but  to  a  plain  man  it  seems  like  military  despot- 
ism. A  war  begun  and  invoked  in  the  name  of 
law,  and  yet  disregarding  the  law  even  in  the 
ceremonies  of  its  inauguration,  promises  nothing 
but  shame  and  disaster. 

But  suppose,  sir,  that  the  most  unbounded  suc- 
cess should  attend  your  arms ;  suppose  you  should 
heap  up  the  most  immense  treasures  of  victory 
and  blood,  where,  after  all,  would  be  your  gains  ? 
You  cannot  reclaim  sovereign  States,  except  as 
conquests;  and  as  conquests,  they  would  be  to 
you  worse  than  useless. 


20         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

Why,  then,  sir — and  the  question  is  very  sim- 
ple— make  that  an  occasion  of  war,  where  war 
would  be  unnatural,  and  in  the  end,  wholly  un- 
profitable ?  Even  when  a  government  is  an  empire, 
instead  of  a  confederation,  there  may  be  occasions 
where  the  acknowledgment  of  the  independence 
of  a  seceded  province,  even,  resolved  on  indepen- 
dence, may  be  policy,  and  statesmanship,  and 
patriotism.  Is  it  any  the  less  so  now  than  when 
Great  Britain  was  besought  by  her  best  patriots 
to  restrain  herself  from  war  upon  her  American 
colonies,  and  to  concede  their  demands.  You,  sir, 
and  your  party,  profess  to  believe  the  South  a 
spotted  and  degraded  section,  doing  dishonor  to 
the  name  and  position  before  the  world  of  what 
was  once  our  common  country.  Why,  then,  seek 
to  reclaim  these  people  to  your  intercourse  ?  Why 
pursue  them  in  their  retreat  ?  Pharoah  attempted 
to  reclaim  the  hated  Israelites,  that  they  might 
not  go  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt.  But,  mark 
you,  he  sought  to  reclaim  them  as  slaves  ! 

Is,  sir,  your  own  heart  surely  hardened  like  that 
of  the  Egyptian  king  ?  Let  me  remind  you,  sir, 
if  not,  perhaps,  a  student  of  your  Bible,  of  the 
outlines  of  that  awful  drama  by  the  Red  sea.     It 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  21 

was  there,  on  the  boundary  of  battle,  that  Moses 
spoke  to  his  countrymen,  who  cried  in  their  fear 
to  return  to  the  land  of  bondage,  and,  in  the  clear 
heroic  terms  of  his  own  towering  faith  and  cour- 
age, gave  the  command:  "Fear  ye  not,  stand 
still ;  for  the  Egyptians  whom  ye  have  seen  to 
day,  ye  shall  shall  see  them  no  more  forever!" 

You  have  appealed  to  the  issues  of  war  !  Let 
those  issues,  then,  decide  !  When  the  reason  and 
the  better  feelings  of  a  man,  or  even  a  "Presi- 
dent," are  stifled,  it  will  be  useless  to  preach  to 
him  even  the  lessons  of  the  Bible. 

The  fact,  sir — the  fact  which,  at  once,  reveals 
the  infamous  desire  of  the  war  you  have  in- 
augurated, and  the  immensity  of  the  prize  in  issue 
for  the  South — is  that  that  unhappy  section  has 
been  used  to  contribute  the  bulk  of  the  revenues 
of  the  government,  to  build  up  the  North,  and  to 
enrich  her  enemies  by  every  form  of  tribute.  The 
Northern  plutocratic  power  would  have  it  con- 
tinued so.  It  would  still  derive  its  forty  to  fifty 
millions  of  annual  revenue  from  the  South, 
through  the  operations  of  the  tariff;  it  would, 
still,  batten  on  the  Southern  trade  in  its  markets, 
a  recent  aggregate   of  which  is  stated  at  four 


22         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOUTHERN   SPY. 

hundred  millions  of  dollars  a  year ;  it  would  stilly 
from  unequal  taxations,  and  different  sources  of 
tribute  in  the  intercourse  between  the  sections, 
reap  its  immense  harvest  of  gain,  which  a  Northern 
writer  has  calculated  at  over  two  hundred  mil- 
lions of  dollars  per  year,  and  which,  sir,  repre- 
sents the  annual  aggregate  tax  or  cost  of  the 
"glorious  Union"  to  the  South. 

It  is  this  prize,  wrapped  in  the  pretences  of 
Stars  and  Stripes,  for  which  you  will  contend ; 
and  believe  me,  sir,  it  is,  for  this  also  that  the 
South  will  press  its  war,  and  out  of  which  it 
can  afford  to  pay  the  extremest  expenses  of  that 
war. 

You,  sir,  now,  after  the  elaborate  illustration 
of  your  traits  of  statesmanship,  will  have  the 
advantage  of  showing  other  resources  of  your 
extraordinary  character,  and  of  exhibiting,  what 
you  are  said  to  possess,  the  splendid  stores  of 
your  military  genius.  You  have  commenced  well, 
sir.  You  are  a  stern  master — a  most  excellent 
military  ruler.  You  are  already  a  Nero  in  your 
own  capital. 

I  congratulate  you  upon  your  almost  perfect 
establishment  of  military  terrorism  over  a  parasiti- 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDENT.  23 

cal  city.  You  have  filled  your  capital  with  troops. 
You  have  set  up  a  political  inquisition  in  Wash- 
ington, by  the  process  of  military  test  oaths, 
wringing  from  men's  consciences  all  that  is 
precious  to  men's  freedom.  You  have  opened 
markets  on  the  green  in  front  of  the  War  De- 
partment to  buy  of  starving  men  in  your  capital, 
for  soldier's  pay  and  rations,  their  bodies,  and 
principles,  and  consciences.  You  have  surrounded 
yourself  with  every  element  to  inspire  terror 
around  you.  Your  minions  and  your  parasites 
are  this  day  hunting  through  the  streets  of  Wash- 
ington, to  do  violence,  by  threats,  at  least,  to 
every  man  who  dares  to  oppose  your  Administra- 
tion. And,  for  the  first  time,  and,  as  I  firmly 
believe,  for  the  last  time,  in  the  history  of  our 
country,  a  Government,  still  holding  on  to  the  old 
name  and  the  old  traditions  of  our  national  inde- 
pendence, is  striving  to  cow  under  the  very 
shadow  of  the  capital — the  ancient  mansion  of 
American  liberty — the  ancient  freedom  of  senti- 
ment and  of  utterance. 

But,  sir,  beware  !  The  terrorism  is  not  yet 
complete  in  your  capital.  It  is  true  that  many 
of   those,   who,   when  danger  was  distant,  were 


24    LETTEES  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

loudest  and  bravest  in  the  censure  of  you  and 
your  party,  are  satisfied  now  to  sneak  around  the 
streets  of  Washington,  anxious  to  play  the  part 
of  ^''hen  hussies"  for  the  -women  and  children, 
speaking  with  "bated  breath,"  or  pleading  new 
scruples  for  submission,  with  the  slime  of  their 
cowardice  tracking  them  through  the  crowd.  But 
let  me  assure  you,  sir,  that  there  arc  in  the  midst 
of  your  federal  city  men  of  a  different  character 
and  purpose — men  who  know  their  rights — and 
men  who  rejoice  with  more  than  Roman  pride, 
that  whether  they  stand  on  a  foreign  soil,  or 
beneath  the  folds  of  their  seven-starred  banner, 
they  stand  as  free'citizens,  under  the  protection 
of  their  own  free  republic.  You  will  not  subdue 
them.  You  cannot  coerce  them.  You  will  be 
sorry  to  touch  a  hair  of  their  heads. 

Take  care,  too,  that  the  terrorism  you  have 
established  in  Washington  does  not  react  upon 
yourself.  Do  not  tremble  for  your  person,  sir ! 
I  do  not  mean  that.  But  I  do  warn  you  that  the 
reign  of  terror,  already  inaugurated  in  Washing- 
ton, stands,  this  day,  as  a  despotic  example  before 
the  country ;  that  revolt  may  soon  stand  you, 
face  to  face,  in  your  capital;  and  that  the  time 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  25 

may  come  when  Washington,  oppressed  and  crush- 
ed down  by  tyranny,  and  beleaguered  by  armies, 
fresh  from  fields  of  victory,  will  have  nothing  to 
oppose  to  them  but  the  wretched  bodies  and  vaga- 
bond uniforms  of  starving  janizaries.  Then,  sir, 
tremble — tremble  ! 

The  splendid  and  chivalrous  Roman  Tribune, 
that  founded  the  latter  Rome,  consented  to  escape 
from  the  throne  of  the  Caesars  in  the  disguise  of 
a  baker;  but  it  was  only  when  the  walls  of  his 
Capitol  were  falling  around  him,  and  the  sounds 
of  its  ruins  was  already  in  his  ears.  Will  you, 
sir,  wait  until  then? — or  will  you,  with  nerves 
already  shattered  by  your  midnight  escapafle  to  the 
shallow  refuges  of  Washington,  choose  to  escape 
now? 

I  am,  &c., 

THE    SOUTHERN   SPY. 


26    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 


III. 

LETTER  TO  THE  PRESIDENT. 

Washington  Citf,  D.  C,  April  20,  1861. 

To  the  President  of  tlie   United  States: 

Sir  :  In  one  sense,  I  must  congratulate  you : 
in  another,  permit  me  to  express  my  pity  for  you. 
The  masked  author  of  ''Junius"  tells  us  that 
the  counsels  and  expedients  of  party,  rather  than 
higher  principles  of  policy,  determined  for  Eng- 
land the  war  upon  her  colonies ;  and  that  the  pro- 
curers of  this  war,  while  intending  only  the  ruin 
of  an  opposition  in  parliament,  "  in  effect  divided 
one-half  of  the  empire  from  the  other." 

A  victory,  sir,  culminating  in  such  grand  his- 
torical results,  you,  yourself,  have  just  illustrated. 
The  time  has  come  when  it  is  clearly  seen  that 
you  have  done  your  strictest  duty  to  your  party. 
A  simple  man,  possessed  only  of  that  degree  of 
intelligence  that  may  be  expected  to  be  acquired 
in  the  contracted  and  vulgar  life  of  a  Western 
village,    you   have    conceived   no   vain   ideas   of 


LETTER   TO    THE    PEESIDENT.  27 

statesmanship  above  the  integrity  of  ^'the  Chi- 
cago phitform,"  and  have  disdained  all  counsel- 
lors beyond  your  associations  with  "the  thorough" 
Republicans  of  your  party..  In  the  spirit  of 
fidelity  to  party,  you  have  determined  the  issue 
of  war  for  your  country.  You  know  very  w"ell 
that  the  Union  is  peace;  that  you  cannot  estab- 
lish it  by  arras.  You  know  very  well  that  glory 
is  to  be  wrested  only  from  a  foreign  enemy;  and 
that  it  is  never  to  be  purchased  from  the  victories 
of  a  civil  war.  You  have  made  war,  sir,  neither 
for  the  reparations  of  evils,  nor  for  the  glory  of 
arms.  You  have  made  it  at  tlfie  command  of  a 
political  party  resolved  "to  rule  or  to  ruin." 

Enjoy,  sir,  the  felicities  of  your  situation.  You 
have  obeyed  the  behests  of  your  party :  hasten  to 
prepare  yourself  for  their  servile  congratulations. 
The  men  who  have  hurried  you  to  the  exploit  of 
war,  will  not  spare  their  praises.  The  vile  priest 
of  the  Abaddon,  who  prays  his  god  for  "war  red- 
der than  blood,"  will  set  you  up  as  an  idol  among 
the  demon  glories  of  his  religion.  The  mobs  will 
cry  "Hosannah."  Even  the  ken-marked  and 
hobbling  wretch,  who  edits  the  great  organ  of 
Abolition  for  your  party  in  the  North,  will  ex- 


28        LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

liaust  himself  to  spew  over  you  his  clotted  praises, 
as  if  in  some  sort  of  beastly  adoration  of  your 
person ! 

But,  sir,  let  this  be  the  limit  of  your  rejoicing. 
The  Union  is  lost  forever.  The  jewelled  States 
of  the  South  are  lost  to  you,  and  gained  for  Inde- 
pendence forever.  A  war  confronts  you  to  pro- 
claim that  independence  in  your  ears,  and  to 
drive  you,  with  denuded  crown,  from  the  soil 
that  it  is  about  to  consecrate  to  the  eternal  liber- 
ties of  the  South. 

^'Ilis  majesty,"  said  the  great  commoner,  pro- 
phesying the  libei'ty  of  the  American  Colonies  on 
the  floor  of  parliarcent — "his  majesty  may  wear 
his  crown,  but,  without  the  American  jewel  in  it, 
it  will  not  be  worth  wearing." 

It  is  said  that  you  are  even  already  alarmed  for 
the  safety  of  your  person,  on  account  of  circum- 
stances daily  surrounding  you  to  make  you  a 
prisoner,  in  spite  of  Northern  succors,  in  your 
own  capital,  I  pity  you,  sir.  I  might  have  told 
you,  months  ago,  that  the  South  had  no  fear  of 
any  war  you  might  make,  and  that  the  effort  of 
your  proclamation  to  frighten  her  people,  and 
even  your  twenty  days'  grace  to  "the  combina- 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDENT.  29 

tions"  would  not  strike  the  sudden  terror  or  sub- 
mission in  their  hearts  that  you  anticipated.  You 
may  satisfy  yourself  with  a  short-lived  tyranny, 
with  desultory  atrocities,  with  a  display  of  arms ; 
but,  plainly,  sir,  you  are  not  the  man  to  sustain 
a  war  in  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the  interest 
of  an  usurped  government,  and  in  opposition  to  a 
people,  resolved  to  take  their  own  destinies  into 
their  own  hands. 

I  am  glad  for  the  sake  of  my  country,  sir,  to 
be  satisfied  on  reflection  that  the  war  you  will 
wage  will  be  contracted  in  its  powers  beyond  what 
you  anticipated.  It  is  said  that  you  have  abund- 
ant offers  of  Northern  succor ;  that  twenty  thou- 
sand men  in  the  coalpits  of  Pennsylvania,  alone, 
have  offered  you  their  services  ;  and  that  you  even 
boast  of  your  opportunity  to  introduce  a  religious 
element  to  exasperate  the  war,  by  hiring  German 
Protestants,  "to  a  man,"  and  animating  them 
against  the  true  and  steadfast  Catholic  patriots  of 
the  country.  But,  sir,  all  these  are  but  the  boasts 
of  a  weak  cause — the  rhodomontade  of  the  streets 
of  Washington.  Be  pacified,  sir.  Your  Dutch 
troops  will  find  employment  enough  in  guarding 
the  passes  of  the  Long  Bridge,  and  in  poking 


30         LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

bayonets  at  half-breeched  newsboys  about  the 
Departments,  without  entering  upon  the  task  of  a 
massacre  of  the  Irish. 

Look,  sir,  to  the  South.  Are  we  to  believe 
that  your  proclamation,  received  in  Montgomery 
with  derisive  laughter,  scorned  by  North  Carolina 
and  Kentucky,  with  all  the  speed  with  which  the 
lightning  of  the  telegraph  could  bring  their  mes- 
sages of  defiance  to  you,  thrown  back  in  your 
face  by  Virginia,  with  the  treatening  stamp  of 
her  foot  already  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac — 
can  even  you,  sir,  believe  that  this  mighty  procla- 
mation has  subdued  one  throb  of  Southern  cour- 
age, or  subtracted  one  man  from  the  lists  of  her 
cause  of  independence!  No,  sir,  it  has  multi- 
plied them.  Your  effort  to  alarm  the  South  has 
only  alarmed  yourself.  Your  collection  of  North- 
ern troops,  numerous  it  may  be,  but  unanimated 
to  fight  by  any  of  those  sentiments,  which  give 
victory  in  battle,  has  but  given  new  accessions 
and  new  ardors  to  a  people  fighting  for  their 
liberties,  and  possessing  all  that  confidence,  and 
all  those  great  moral  principles  of  victory  inspired 
by  a  war  of  independence. 

I  thank  God,  sir,  that  my  own  native   State, 


LETTEE    TO    THE    PEESIDENT.  31 

Virginia,  is,  this  day,  not  listening  to  the  time- 
server.  What  her  Convention  may  determine  I 
know  not ;  but  I  know  that  her  lineal  people  will, 
ultimately  determine  nothing  to  the  dishonor  of 
their  glorious  State — nothing  in  the  shallow  spirit 
of  cowardice,  or  of  mean  compliance  with-  present 
power.  Virginia  will  not  listen  to  counsels  con- 
ceived in  such  a  spirit.  She  will  listen,  let  me 
assure  you,  sir,  to  higher  sources  of  inspiration 
than  your  own — to  the  voices  of  her  history — to 
the  commands  of  her  mission — to  the  thunder- 
toned  messages  that,  commenced  at  Sumter,  will 
soon  peal  around  the  peninsula  of  the  Atlantic. 
Break  the  unity  of  the  South !  She  never  will. 
Fold  her  arms  with  wailing  cries  of  ^'peacel" 
She  never  will.  Take  argued  repose  from  you! 
She  never  will.  Stand  still  when  the  battle  is  on 
the  air,  and  the  ground  is  sown  with  the  blood  of 
her  brethren  !     She  never — never  will. 

Sir,  you  cannot  terrify  the  South.  In  vain  will 
her  people  explore  your  own.  character,  for  evi- 
dences of  the  conqueror.  You  may  be  a  san- 
guinary man.  You  exhibit  no  traits  of  being  a 
warlike  one.  Guarded  by  praetorian  bands  in 
your  capital;    encompassed  with  ten  armed  at- 


32    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHEKN  SPY. 

tendants,  it  is  said,  in  your  sleeping  room ;  with 
liberty  to  practice  still  all  the  levities  of  your 
character,  even  in  the  darkest  hours  of  your 
country's  agony  and  suffering;  not  even  inter- 
mitting your  drawing-room  entertainment  on  the 
evening-  of  the  day  of  the  commencement  of  the 
civil  war  at  Sumter,  you  do,  indeed,  resemble 
Nero,  the  blood-thirsty  trifler,  not  Caesar,  the 
conqueror. 

Sir,  I  am  sorry  to  disappoint  your  vanity,  or 
to  abate  your  courage.  But  the  truth,  the  fact — 
the  exclamation  of  pity  for  you,  and  the  prophecy 
of  victory  in  the  war  of  liberty — is,  that  the  South 
does  not  fear  you  ! 

I  am,  &c., 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  33 


IV. 

,  LETTER  TO  THE  PRESIDENT. 

Near  the  Government,  April  27,  1861. 
The  President  of  the   United  States: 

Sir  :  You  are  said  to  flatter  yourself  that  you 
have  now  succeeded  in  expelling  from  Washing- 
ton all  who  have  dared  to  utter  a  word  in  oppo- 
sition to  your  Administration.  It  is  true  that 
you  have  driven  many  of  them  out  by  armed 
mobs  invested  with  the  gilded  livery  of  your  ser- 
vice. Stationed  on  the  highways  and  the  by-ways, 
they  have  sought  to  kidnap  men  or  to  buy  their 
souls  for  your  service;  divided  into  innumerable 
press-gangs  they  have  daily  explored  the  grog- 
geries  for  victims ;  detailed  as  spies,  they  have 
constantly  furnished  to  you,  or  your  minions,  lists 
for  proscription ;  or  straggling  about  the  streets 
as  liveried  bullies,  they  have  sought  to  entrap 
men  into  private  quarrels,  or  to  force  them  to 
self-defence,  that  the  mob  in  waiting  might  over- 
power and  murder  them.     Such,  sir,  is  the  con- 


34         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

dition  of  subjection  to  your  imperial  will  to  which 
you  flatter  yourself  that  you  have  reduced  the 
city  of  Washington.  The  country  will  remember 
its  history.  It  will  remember  that  it  has  been 
accomplished  while  3"0ur  partisans,  including  even 
the  ruffian  knight  of  Kansas,  who  guards  with  a 
hundred  men  your  convivial  night  hours,  have 
been  holding  meetings  in  the  sacred  precincts  of 
the  churches  of  Washington,  to  insist  upon  and 
to  exclaim  upon,  with  the  old  puritanical  ribaldry 
of  righteousness, /r(?e  speech  for  ^'the  Lord's  peo- 
ple," but  for  none  besides. 

But,  sir,  you  flatter  yourself  with  one  mistake. 
Many  of  the  enemies  whom  you  think  to  have 
expelled  by  your  military  mobs,  have  left  Wash- 
ington on  other  accounts.  They  hope  to  see  you 
again.  The  mission  of  the  National  Volunteers 
was  fulfilled  in  your  capital  before  they  left  it,  or 
before  the  minor  organ  of  your  Administration 
essayed  to  procure  their  arrest.  Be  careful,  more- 
over, sir,  how  you  give  yourself  up  so  entirely  to 
the  belief  that  all  your  enemies  in  Washington 
are  expelled  or  subdued  to  fear — "  Youi'  lists  are 
not  yet  full  enough^''  cried  the  weary  and  trem- 
bling Robespierre  to  his  secretaries,  after  months 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDEIST.  35 

had  been  vainly  spent  in  assuring,  by  the  extent 
of  his  proscriptionSj  the  Reign  of  Terror  in  the 
capital  of  France.  They  ivere  not  full  enough. 
A  few  days  passed,  and  the  gaunt  and  cowardly 
tyrant  of  Paris  was  in  the  hands  of  the  avengers, 
and  borne  along  the  streets  with  the  shout  of  the 
'''guillotine'  in  his  ears. 

However  entertaining  it  may  be  to  some  minds 
to  observe  the  terrors  of  a  tyrant,  or  to  witness 
their  realization,  permit  me,  sir,  to  pass  to  notice 
some  other  lessons  which  you  have  given  to  the 
country  in  the  condition  of  things  you  have  main- 
tained at  your  capital.  In  the  small  district 
where  your  authority  is,  for  the  moment,  supreme, ' 
you  have  naturall^^ given  the  truest  examples  of 
your  theory  and  designs  of  government  for  the 
whole  country.  They  are  examples  in  which  the 
wantonness  of  a  Republican  majority,  the  terrors 
of  the  cowardice  of  its  leaders,  exhibitions  of 
military  terrorism,  oaths  of  feudal  allegiance,  and 
the  subordinations  of  patriotism  to  the  servile 
sentiments  of  vassalage  contend  for  preeminence 
in  the  display.  They  are,  in  short,  the  most 
proper  examples  of  the  despotism  which  you  de. 


36         LETTERS    OF    THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

sire  to  establish  over  the  whole  country,  and  in 
which  you  essay  to  maintain  its  union. 

When  will  the  country  learn  that  your  idea  of 
maintaining  the  old  Union  of  the  States  is  simply 
despotic — conceived  in  no  historical  enthusiasm 
for  restoring  past  glories — animated  by  no  patri- 
otic desires  contemplating  the  good  of  the  whole 
country — but  coldly  and  sternly  calculated  in  the 
narrow  spirit  of  the  despot.  I  do  not  accuse 
you,  sir,  without  a  record.  Your  own  speeches — 
and  those  speeches  intended,  too,  as  special  expla- 
nations of  your  purposes— condemn  you.  When 
you  were  visited  by  a  committee  of  the  clergy  of 
Baltimore,  with  messages  and  implorations  for 
peace,  you  answered  them  in* a  style  too  vulgar 
and  trifling  to  show  the  least  real  regard  either 
for  the  Union  or  the  peace  of  the  country.  In 
the  accounts  of  such  a  conference,  it  was  to  be 
hoped  that  at  least  one  historical  sentiment  might 
have  dropped  from  your  lips,  or  some  words  of 
grave,  or,  at  least,  decent  concern  for  the  destinies 
of  the  country.  But  the  country  was  disap- 
pointed  even  in  the  small  expectation  of  decency 
in  your  manners.     You  are  said  to  have  expressed 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDENT.  37 

no  concern,  but  that  for  the  safety  of  your  person ; 
to  have  given  no  other  explanation  of  the  war 
you  were  waging  than  a  desire  to  secure  the 
revenues  of  the  South  still  to  the  coffers  of  your 
treasury ;  and  to  have  had  the  effrontery,  at  last, 
to  declare  in  the  same  breath  in  which  you  pro- 
claimed your  fears  and  cowardice,  that  you  were 
determined  to  maintain  your  reputation  for 
''spunk'"  in  the  prosecution  of  hostilities.  Alas, 
sir,  consider  the  spectacle :  A  committee  before 
you,  dignified  by  the  holy  offices  of  religion,  and 
yet  more  dignified  by  their  special  mission  of 
charity,  entreating,  in  the  last  emergency,  the 
restraint  of  the  war  you  had  declared,  and  you 
answering  them  with  the  explanations  of  that  war 
in  the  needs  of  the  treasury  and  your  panic  fears 
of  being  hanged,  and  with  the  wretched  phrases 
and  anecdotes  of  vulgar  wit !  I  will  not  dwell  on 
such  a  spectacle. 

The  accounts,  sir,  of  your  interview  with  the 
Baltimore  committee  are  only  paralleled,  as  they 
may  be,  in  a  measure,  explained  by  the  well 
known  habits  of  your  life  in  the  retreats  of  the 
executive  mansion.  It  is,  indeed,  a  curious  fact 
of   history,    that    the    worst    tyrants   have    been 


38         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOUTHERT^i    SPY. 

remarkable  for  their  levities  of  behavior,  and 
have  rather  increased  in  the  most  terrible  dis- 
tresses of  their  country  the  frivolities  and  en- 
joyments of  their  palaces.  You,  sir,  are  said 
to  illustrate  this  imperial  peculiarity  in  the  occu- 
pations of*jest  and  conviviality  in  the  White 
House,  at  the  very  time  you  are  contemplating 
the  proscriptions  and  massacres  of  your  country- 
men. You  are  no  more  willing  to  give  up  the 
trifles  and  privileged  buffooneries  of  your  position 
than  to  yield  the  substantial  symbols  of  your 
power.  You  are  not  willing  to  return  to  your 
old  resources  in  the  taverns  of  Springfield,  You 
wish  to  remain  the  trifier  and  tyrant  of  the  White 
House;  consoled  by  "experienced  nurses"  (whom 
Miss  Dix  has  promised  you);  compelling  ''the 
old  soldier,"  who  protects  you,  to  low  familiarities 
with  your  person;  and  comforting  yourself  with 
the  vulgar  gloatings  of  the  bully  over  the  terrors 
of  those  v«^ho  are  afraid  only  because  they  are 
more  cowardly  than  himself. 

Indeed,  such  are  the  trivialities  of  your  dispo- 
sition, sir,  that  I  can  testify  that  you  have  not 
even  yet  restrained  the  pleasant  liberty  of  the 
lady  of  the  White  House  to  prosecute  her  pur- 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  39 

chases  in  the  "dollar  stores"  on  the  avenue. 
Twice  this  week  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  ob- 
serving her  there  in  the  feminine  elation  of  cheap 
''bargains." 

But  to  return,  sir,  to  a  very  brief  analysis  of 
your  disclosures  to  your  Baltimore  visitors.  We 
are  left  to  understand  by  them  that  your  motives 
for  war  arc  double :  to  save  your  revenue  in  the 
South,  and  to  assure  the  protection  of  your  person. 
If,  in  the  compass  of  possibilities,  you  should 
attain  the  first — conquer  the  South  to  that  point 
whereat  you  might  be  able  to  collect,  by  force,  a 
revenue  in  her  borders — consider  that  it  could 
only  be  at  the  price  of  massacres  which  could 
never  be  repaid,  and  wdth  the  lo,-s  of  all  the  great 
interests  w^hich  may  be  enumerated  in  the  peace 
and  liberty  of  a  country.  If  you  should  accom- 
plish the  second  motive — the  individual  safety  of 
Abraham  Lincoln — it  would  be,  sir,  still  more 
questionable  in  what  respect  your  country  would 
be  a  gainer. 

If  the  regards  fo  your  personal  safety  are 
really  uppermost  in  your  mind,  why  not,  sir, 
effect  them  by  the  obvious  means  already  at  your 
command?      Why   not   declare   for   peace?      It 


40      LErrERs  of  the  southert^  spy. 

might  instantly  restore  the  safety  of  your  person. 
Why  not  resign,  making  your  resignation  on  such 
conditions,  or  with  such  understandings  with  your 
constitutional  successors  as  to  call  for  a  new 
election  to  the  chief  executive  office?  It,  under 
present  circumstances,  would  be  the  master-stroke 
of  your  life.  It  would  be  but  giving  to  the  peo- 
ple, impressively  and  directly,  a  question  too 
grave  for  any  one  man  to  decide.  It  would  leave 
ycu  without  the  reproaches  of  weakness,  and  with 
the  undying  honors  of  having  submitted  a  civil 
war  to  the  last  resort  of  arbitrament.  It  would 
imitate  the  conservative  and  virtuous  feature  of 
the  British  Government  (which,  in  many  respects, 
was  the  model  for  our  own,)  in  the  capacity  it  has, 
by  a  change  of  ministry,  which  is  virtually  the 
governing  power,  to  adapt  itself  to  changes  of 
circumstances,  and  to  conform  itself,  at  all  times, 
to  public  sentiment.  It  would — if  this  consider- 
ation can  plead  to  you  above  all — save  your  per- 
son with  decency  and  with  certainty.  But  no, 
sir — you  will  not  adopt  these  obvious  and  honor- 
able modes  of  escape.  The  truth  is,  you  are 
anxious  to  save  your  person,  but  you  are  anxious 
to  save  it  as  that  of  an  enthroned  despot. 


LETTER   TO   THE    PRESIDENT.  41 

Do  I  not,  sir,  rightly  interpret  your  feelings, 
or  do  I  err  in  verbal  accuracy  in  calling  such  a 
war  of  "safety"  a  war  of  despotism.  Look  back, 
sir,  only  to  the  date  of  your  proclamation,  and 
you  will  see  that  you  have  already  fulfilled  all  the 
conditions  of  a  war  of  bad  faith  and  aggression, 
and  already  confirmed,  beyond  the  possibility  of 
a  doubt,  the  character  of  your  hostilities  as  those 
of  a  tyrant. 

When  you  made  your  proclamation,  you  then 
indicated  that  the  forces  you  summoned  therein, 
were  to  be  used  to  repossess  the  forts  on  the 
Southern  coasts.  You  have  already  falsified  this 
declaration  of  purpose.  Under  new  pretences  of 
protecting  Washington,  you  have  completely 
turned  attention  from  the  Southern  forts,  to 
invest  Virginia  and  Maryland  with  your  forces. 
Washington  is  but  the  strategical  point  of  the 
campaign.  It  will  enable  you  to  seize  Alexan- 
dria, to  command  the  important  heights  of  the 
Potomac,  and  to  occupy  the  Northern  portions  of 
Virginia  with  subsidiary  forces.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  possession  of  the  equally  important 
point  of  Fortress  Monroe  is  calculated  to  give 
you  command  of  the  low  countries  of  Virginia. 


42    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

You  are  already  in  possession  of  the  two  import- 
ant passages  into  Virginia.  You  have  secured  a 
safe  and  uninterrupted  transit  through  Maryhmd, 
not  willing,  as  yet,  to  risk  the  Thermopylae  of 
Baltimore.  You  have  not  only  violated  the  sov- 
ereignty of  Maryland  in  the  usurpation  of  an 
absolute  right  of  way,  but  that  right,  which  you 
insisted  upon  for  yourself,  you  have  been  prompt 
to  deny  to  the  people  of  the  State  itself!  Your 
forces  are  to  have  free  transit  through  the  terri- 
tories of  Maryland,  but  the  people  of  Maryland 
are  not  to  enjoy  the  same  right  in  their  own  ter- 
ritories. They  are  already  cut  oif  from  Wash- 
ington, and  from  Annapolis,  while  your  own 
troops  pass  uninterruptedly  between  these 
points. 

These  movements,  sir,  betray  the  designs  of  an 
aggressive  war  waged  by  a  desperate  tyrant.  You 
are  said  to  boast  already  that,  with  the  command 
of  the  Chesapeake,  and  of  the  larger  portion  of 
the  Potomac  bouudary,  to  have  effectually  cut  off 
the  connection  between  Maryland  and  Virginia, 
and  Avith  Washington  and  Fortress  Monroe  in 
your  possession,  to  "'liold  the  wolf  hy  the  ears.''' 
We  shall   soon  test  the  justice  of   your  boast: 


LETTER    TO    THE    PEESIDENT.  43 

we  already  know  and  appreciate  the  spirit  of  des- 
potic subjugation  in  which  it  is  uttered. 

Virginia,  sir,  may  have  been  betrayed  into  some 
degree  of  inertness  by  the  false  implications  of 
your  proclamation ;  and  there  may  have  been 
traitors  in  her  own  borders  to  help  her  to  the 
false  conclusion  of  maintaining  what  is  called  a 
'^  defensive'  position.  But  the  brave  and  enthu- 
siastic spirit  of  her  people  will  soon  override  the 
formularies  of  delay  and  of  that  caution  in  which 
treachery  often  finds  at  once  its  own  concealment, 
and  the  means  of  seducing  others.  It  will,  it 
must  soon  confront  you  on  the  banks  of  the 
Potomac;  it  will,  it  must,  at  the  last,  brave  you 
in  your  capital ;  it  will,  it  must,  as  sure  as  the 
prophecies-  of  necessity,  lay  your  proud  city  in 
such  ruins,  as  will  leave  nothing  hereafter  to  be 
fought  for.  Carthago  delenda  est.  Remember 
the  end;  it  approaches;  it  involves  your  own  des- 
tiny— perhaps  the  life  you  have  nursed  with  guards 
and  bolts,  and  fattened  with  convivial  joys,  only 
for  a  sacrifice  for  the  sword  of  the  avenger. 
I  am,  &c., 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


44        LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER  TO  THE  EDITOR  OF 

Maryland,  May  1,  1861. 
To  the  Editor  of 

Sir  :  It  is  related  of  an  ancient  wagoner  that 
having  got  his  vehicle  into  a  difficult  pas^,  he  im- 
plored Jupiter  to  extricate  him.  After  long  im- 
portunities in  prayer  to  the  god,  to  show  hi\n  out 
of  his  difficulties,  he,  at  last,  received  the  simple 
answer,  ^'put  your  shoulder  to  the  zvheel." 

The  bemired  State  of  Maryland  is  imploring 
to  be  delivered  from  the  difficulties,  and  terrors 
of  her  position.  Let  me  say,  the  only  way  to  do 
it,  is  to  "put  the  shoulder  to  the  wheel;"  and 
while  men  delay  to  do  this,  it  is  plain  she  will  only 
sink  deeper  in  the  mire  and  mold  of  her  position. 

It  is  strange  indeed,  that  men  of  Maryland, 
who  were  going  about  a  few  days  ago  with  the 
decantatum  of  "secession"  on  their  lips,  are  now 
struck  with  a  sudden  stupor.  They  say  that  they 
can  do  nothing,  that  they  are  powerless,  that  the 


LETTER    TO    THE    EDITOR    OF 45 

reversion  of  public  sentiment,  under  the  influence 
of  the  fears  of  the  people,  is  now  irresistible. 

The  fact  is,  sir,  that  there  is  a  reversion,  and 
a  reversion  which  is  one  of  the  most  naked  and 
shameless  tergiversations  of  the  times.  While 
too  many  are  satisfied  to  rest  the  cause  of  liberty 
on  mere  protestations  of  feeling,  or  on  idle  invo- 
cations for  help,  a  constant  appeal  is  being  made 
by  others  to  the  fears  of  the  State,  to  drive  her 
back  into  the  refuges  of  the  Union:  all  manly 
sentiment,  all  generous  sympathies,  and  that  spirit 
of  devotion  which  is  the  spirit  of  independence, 
are  choked  by  spectral  fears,  or  crushed  in  the 
selfish  and  narrow  considerations  of  the  present. 

Maryland  is  advised  to  try  no  "crucial  experi- 
ments," but  to  betake  herself  to  the  safe  position 
of  a  temporising  policy,  in  which  she  may  give 
the  advantages  of  her  neutral  position  to  the 
Lincoln  Government,  and  yield  the  privileges  of 
her  soil  for  the  present,  to  its  troops,  and,  possi- 
bly, hereafter  join  the  Southern  Confederacy,  but 
only  in  the  event  of  the  successful  establishment, 
or  the  acknowledgment  of  its  independence.  This 
dishonorable,  cheating,  double  position — this  pre- 
cious, safe  game  of  ambidextrous  neutrality — is 


46    LETTEES  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

now  the  constant  theme  of  recommendation  that 
assails  the  ear.  Even  one  of  the  hitherto  most 
excellent  and  patriotic  journals  of  Baltimore  is 
now  prompt  to  recommend  the  duplicity  and  ad- 
vantages of  such  a  position.  The  copy  of  this 
journal  which  lies  before  me  at  the  date  of  this 
writing,  advises  a  pledge  of  good  faith,  made  on 
the  honor  of  the  State  and  without  reservation, 
not  to  take  up  arms  against  the  Federal  Adminis- 
tration, so  long  as  the  city  of  Washington  is  held 
and  occupied  by  them ;  nor  to  offer  any  hostility 
or  opposition  to  the  Administration,  or  the  army 
assembled  for  its  support  upon  the  soil  of  Mary- 
land. It  adds  in  cold,  confident,  shameless  terms 
the  following  explanation  of  its  choice : 

"The  result  of  this  position  would  secure  to 
"the  Administration  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  ad- 
"  vantages  to  be  derived  from  the  territory  of  a 
"neutral,  with  the  assurance  of  absolute  safety 
"within  that  territory;  and  with  the  possible 
"maintenance  of  peaceful  relations  until  the 
"Union  was  restored,  if  that  be  practicable,  or 
"  until  the  independence  of  the  Southern  Confed- 
'^ eracy  is  recognized.'' 

Such  wretched  ambiloquy  as  this — such  a  miser- 


LETTER  TO  THE  EDITOK  OF 47 

able  cheat  as  this  is  sought  to  be  imposed  upon 
the  honor  of  Maryland,  and  the  honor  of  that 
cause,  which  she  proposes  to  pollute  by  mercenary 
and  chaifering  embraces.  God  forbid  that  this 
should  be  the  choice  of  Maryland !  God  forbid 
that  she  should  sell  her  destinies  and  honor  to 
any  of  the  infamous  bids  to  pollute  her — to  the 
cheats  of  the  press ;  or  to  the  suggestions  of  ter- 
rorism; or  to  Gov.  Hicks'  plain-spoken  propo- 
sition to  debauch  her;  or  to  the  gold  of  "the 
commercial  centres"  of  the  North,  already  busy 
in  corrupting  her  honest  choice ;  or  to  the  cunning 
toils  of  the  wizen-faced  King  of  Plug-Uglyism, 
who  seeks  to  purchase  by  Maryland's  infamy  the 
seat  in  Congress  that  he  has  already  assoiled  by 
his  own  treachery! 

Sir,  I  cannot  write  with  patience  of  these  at- 
tempts to  betray  a  State,  whose  heart  and  honor 
are  alike  noble.  ExcUse  me  for  my  warmth. 
And  pray  understand,  also,  my  own  position  on 
this  question,  not  as  that  of  recommending  instant 
and  reckless  secession  to  Maryland,  but  of  ad- 
vising only  active,  willing,  laborious,  thorough, 
and  spirited  preparations  for  what  in  the  end 
must  be,  and  should  be  her  position.     Her  sister 


48        LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

States  of  the  South  appreciate  the  present,  help- 
less situation  of  Maryland,  and  do  not  ask,  as 
they  cannot  expect,  her  immediate  separation 
from  the  Union  ;  but  they  do  expect  that  she  will 
not  be  idle,  or  submissive,  or  indifferent,  but  that 
she  will  prepare  herself;  that  she  will  arm  her- 
self; and  that  in  undiminished  spirit  she  will 
await  the  time,  when  she  may  declare  herself, 
purely  and  bravely,  and,  above  all,  without  mean 
reference  to  what  side  victory  inclines  to,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Southern  Confederacy  of  States. 

God  forbid  that  any  should  be  so  unjust,  or  so 
athirst  of  blood  as  to  condemn  the  present  en- 
forced suspension  of  her  action.  But  I  condemn, 
sir,  the  designs  of  her  enemies  to  take  advantage 
of  the  present  necessary  spell  to  place  her  in  a 
position  of  irretrievable  and  certain  submission  to 
the  misgovernment  of  the  North.  I  condemn  the 
cheat  of  imposing  upon  her  the  farce  of  a  one- 
sided neutrality,  unable  to  protect  itself,  and  the 
next  necessary  step  of  which  will  be  union  with 
the  North.  And  I  alike  condemn  that  pretence 
of  neutrality,  which  is  to  enable  her  to  adopt,  in 
the  course  of  events,  whichever  side  is  proved  to 
be  the  stronger,  and  which,  while  professing  desire 


LETTER   TO    THE    EDITOR    OF 49 

for  the  connection  of  Maryland  with  the  Southern 
States,  makes  itself  safe  bj  reserving  the  alter- 
native of  siding  with  the  Lincoln  Government,  in 
the  event  of  their  discouragement. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  expose  here  the  positions 
of  Gov.  Hicks'  message.  Sir,  it  is  not  worth  the 
prick  of  a  pen  to  disturb  it.  Whatever  the  Legis- 
lature of  Maryland  may  do,  it  is  some  satisfaction 
to  know  that  it  will  be  entirely  without  reference 
to  his  recommendations;  and  whatever  scheme 
may  be  determined  by  it  to  advise  or  provide  for 
the  suspension  of  the  State's  action,  it  will,  at 
least,  be  unlike  the  clotted  lump  of  nonsense, 
which  he  has  recommended  as  *' neutrality." 
Very  truly,  yours, 

THE    SOUTHERN   SPY. 

Maryland,  May  16,  1861.  ********* 
Since  the  above  letter  was  written,  Maryland  has 
fallen  further  within  the  grasp  of  the  despot. 
About  thirty  thousand  foreign  troops  are  on  her 
soil  to-day ;  the  Legislature  has  been  wholly  inane, 
and  has  assented  to  the  attitude  of  submission 
indefinitely ;  the  city  of  Baltimore  has  been  sub- 
jected to  military  occupation  and  to  the  insults, 


50         LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHEEN   SPY. 

for  a  time  at  least,  of  the  dawdling  and  inebriate 
proclamations  of  an  obese,  epauletted  Yankee; 
and  wliile  efforts  have  been  plainly  in  progress  to 
disarm  the  State,  and  to  violate  her  military 
organization,  her  shuffling  Governor  has  sought 
safe  occasion  to  ape  the  tyranny  he  obeys,  and  to 
make  a  call  for  four  regiments  of  volunteers  to 
answer  the  requisition  of  the  now  old  and  spent 
war  proclamation,  made  a  month  ago  by  the  cousin 
of  humanity  perched  in  the  Executive  Chair  at 
Washington.  The  soldiers,  the  apes,  the  time- 
servers,  and  the  mummies,  are  the  curse  of  Mary- 
land. And  )7hat  of  the  patriotic,  liberty-loving 
men  of  the  unhappy  State  ! — Said  a  hero  in  the 
trials  of  the  Revolution  of  76:  ''too  many  flatter 
themselves  that  their  pusillanimity  is  true  jiru- 
dence;  but  in  perilous  times  like  these,  I  cannot 
conceive  of  prudence  without  fortitude!" — that 
is  not  active  bravery  and  prowess,  which  are 
sometimes  untimely,  but  ''' fortitude:''  the  patient, 
confident,  heroic  spirit,  which,  while  it  waits  for 
opportunity,  makes  both  it  and  the  preparations 
to  use  it.  Let  Maryland  act  on  this  hint — let 
her  make,  as  best  she  can,  both '  the  opportunity 
and  the  preparation  to  strike  home  with  the  aveng- 


LETTER   TO     SECRETARY   SEWARD.         51 

ing  arm — let  her  preserve  and  exercise  her  forti- 
tude— let  her  do  this;  or  let  her  assume  at  once 
a  repose  of  irretrievable  infamy !  Nullum  est 
tertium. 

s.  s. 


52         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOUTHEKN    SPY. 


VI. 

LETTER  TO  SECRETARY  SEWARD. 

Maryland,  May  10,  1861. 

To  Mr.  Secretary  Seward: 

Sir:  You  have  been  for  many  years  an  object 
of  public  curiosity.  Excelling  in  the  conceal- 
ments and  disguises  of  empty  declamation,  re- 
markable for  the  glosses  of  your  style  of  expres- 
sion, and  exhibiting  that  command  of  language 
which  makes  it  perform  the  office  of  concealing 
rather  than  expressing  thoughts,  and  which  was 
so  happily  illustrated  in  your  well-known  compo- 
sition of  the  Inaugural  of  the  Illinois  President, 
your  sentiments  and  your  character  have  been 
very  differently  estimated  in  the  opinion  of  the 
public.  You  have  been  regarded  as  a  statesman 
it  the  parts  of  the  North,  where  people,  judging 
from  their  own  stand-points  of  character,  have 
esteemed  statesmanship  to  consist  in  low  cunning 
and  artful  non-cominittals  of  evil  designs ;  and  to 
them  your  very  New  England  visage  of  narrow 


f 


LETTER   TO     SECRETARY   SEWARD.         58 

and  skulking  selfishness  has  been  taken  as  an 
index  of  Yankee  wisdom  and  ability.  By  others, 
sir,  who  profess  to  have  pierced  the  disguises  of 
your  character,  you  are  condemned  as  a  dema- 
gogue^ a  character  baneful  in  the  days  of  peace, 
but  in  the  great  peril  of  a  country,  then  the  most 
heartless  mercenary  and  dangerous  of  wretches. 

I  am  truly  sorry,  sir,  to  see  this  latter  estima- 
tion of  your  character  confirmed  by  your  recent 
exhibitions  of  the  narrow  and  demagogical  states- 
manship that  you  have  so  long  sought  to  conceal. 
An  acute  man  may  long  find  resources  of  conceal- 
ment in  ambiguous  and  artful  words;  but  the 
word  and  spirit  of  his  expressions,  especially 
should  he  be  over-fond  of  talking  and  writing, 
will  eventually  betray  his  sentiments  and  designs 
to  the  mind  of  the  people. 

In  the  last  Senate,  you  made  a  glowing  appeal 
for  the  Union ;  you  confessed  it  to  be  in  danger ; 
you  besought  sacrifices,  even  of  party,  to  sustain 
it.  You  must  have  been  only  amusing  the  people 
with  these  declarations;  for  in  your  late  official 
letter  of  instructions  to  the  recently  appointed 
minister  to  France,  you  urge  him  to  assure  that 
government  of  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  a  perma- 


54        LETTERS    OF   THE   SOTTTHERIS'  SPY. 

nent  disruption  has  never  entered  into  the  mind 
of  "^'any  candid  statesman  in  this  country,"  and 
of  the  certainty,  too,  of  the  continuance  of  "the 
constitutional  Union,"  and  that,  too,  as  an  object 
of  '•^  affection  r' 

How,  sir,  do  you  explain  this  inconsistency? 
Is  the  Union  in  less  danger  now,  when  war  is 
proclaimed,  than  when,  in  the  season  of  conven- 
tions, you  delivered  your  glossed  and  Jesuitical 
speech  in  the  Senate  for  its  preservation?  Is  it 
the  fact  that  no  statesman  in  this  country  con- 
ceives the  possibility  of  its  rupture  ?  Pardon  me, 
sir,  are  you  truthful  in  this?  I  acknowledge,  sir, 
that  there  is  a  magnanimous  part  in  these  decla- 
tions,  and  I  congratulate  you  for  it.  You  are 
willing  to  confess  that  you  were  no  statesman  in 
once  contemplating  the  danger  of  the  Union. 
You  arc  willing  to  make  yourself  out  as  formerly, 
a  fool.  But,  sir,  will  the  country  be  satisfied  to 
take  even  this  magnanimous  confession :  for,  re- 
member, sir,  there  is  yet  a  more  scornful  name 
than  that  of  fool,  and  for  calling  which,  incon- 
sistency sometimes  affords  equal  grounds. 

You  have  abandoned  your  exclamatory  states- 
manship for  the  Union  to  adopt  in  its  stead  the 


LETTER    TO     SECRETAEY   SEWAED.         55 

wisdom  of  jour  master,  and  to  substitute  for  your 
former  anxieties  his  vulgar  apothegms  of  '''all 
rights''  '■'nohody  hurt,'"  and  ^'"nothing  goiyig 
wrong.''  You  are,  indeed,  a  supple  tool.  Now 
when  the  Union  is  imminently  threatened,  you 
exchange  the  fears  you  had  for  it,  when  it  was 
only  moderately  threatened,  for  Abraham  Lin- 
coln's vulgar  and  insolent  confidence,  on  which 
you  improve  by  the  art  which  is  peculiarly  your 
own.  You  misrepresent.  You  misrepresent  a 
great  government,  inaugurated  under  the  solemn 
and  imposing  forms  of  State  authority ;  already 
sustained  by  nearly  eight  millions  of  people ; 
exercising  among  them  all  the  ordinary  functions 
of  government,  and  receiving  their  willing  obedi- 
ence, and  standing  l^efore  the  world  for  rightful 
recognition — you  misrepresent  it  as  a  disorganized 
insurrection,  from  which  nothing  is  to  be  feared, 
and  you  rank  it  with  the  passing  and  incidental 
"changes"  in  the  history  of  the  Union. 

This,  sir,  is  in  consistency,  at  least,  with  the 
war  proclamation  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  of  which 
I  can  now  well  believe  the  report  that  you  were 
the  scrivener.  In  that  proclamation,  which  had 
to  be  bungled  into  conformity  to  a  tortured  law 


56        LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERTT   SPY. 

and  to  a  perverse  misrepresentation  of  facts,  it 
was  necessary  to  style  States  acting  under  the 
solemnities  bf  organic  bodies,  as  *' unlawful  com- 
hinations;''  and  to  support,  still  further,  the  af- 
fectation of  a  mere  raid,  we  had  to  be  refreshed 
with  another  Lincoln iana,  in  warning  four  or  five 
millions  of  people,  standing  on  their  own  soil,  to 
return  within  twenty  days  to  their  Jiomes  !  What 
an  example  of  seriousness,  of  truthfulness,  of 
justice,  of  patriotic  courage  and  patriotic  rhetoric, 
I  leave  the  world  to  admire. 

I  am  willing  to  admit,  sir,  that  the  misrepre- 
sentations you  couched  in  this  famous  proclama- 
tion, and  that  you  have  attempted  now  to  renew 
to  the  Governments  of  Europe,  would  be  most 
richly,  as  they  are  most  impotently,  ridiculous,  if 
they  were  not  so  foul  with  falsehood,  as  to  excite 
disgust  as  well  as  derision.  Why  conceal  the  fact 
of  the  existence  of  a  Government  in  the  South, 
recognised  within  its  own  jurisdiction,  and  exer- 
cising all  the  powers  for  revenue,  civil  order, 
legislation,  the  administration  of  justice,  peace 
and  war  ?  Why  atttempt  to  degrade  a  great  revo- 
lutionary fact  by  misrepresenting  it  as  an  insur- 
rection or  raid  ?     You,  sir,  are  best  able  to  answer 


LETTER   TO     SECKETAEY    SEWARD.         57 

these  questions.  You  know  best  your  own  pur- 
poses for  degrading  the  Soutbein  movement  to 
the  proportions  of  an  incidental  insurrection. 
You  know  best  the  extreme  necesi^itj  for  balking 
tlie  European  recognition  of  the  Southern  Con- 
federacy. But,  sir,  you  attempt  a  vain  and 
shameless  task,  when  you  seek  to  encounter  a 
question  so  serious  and  critical  by  attempted  con- 
cealments and  falsifications  of  facts  op  n  to  all 
the  world,  and  which  all  the  world  is  interested  in 
examining. 

'the  Governments  of  Europe,  you  may  rest 
assured,  A\ill  not  take  tlie  facts  regarding  the  con- 
dition of  affairs  in  the  South  on  the  representa- 
tions of  inimical  statements  at  Wasliington.  They 
will  ascertain  and  estimate  them  for  themselves. 
Indeed,  the  very  expedients  employed  in  the  con- 
duct of  hostilities  on  the  part  of  your  Govern- 
ment, as  well  at  on  the  side  of  the  South — block- 
ades, letters  of  marque,  &;c., — will  constrain  the  Eu- 
ropean powers,  so  far  from  recognising  your  dwarfed 
representations  of  insurrection,  sedition,  &c.,  to 
govern  their  action  on  the  basis  of  the  actual  ex- 
istence of  war,  and  to  recognise  the  South  as  a 

belligerent.     This,  sir,  you  may  see,  opens  tL© 
4 


58        LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

door   at  once  to   the  recognition   of    a   de  facto 
Government. 

You,  sir,  not  only  have  committed  yourself  to 
a  bad  and  superrogatory  task  in  seeking  to  impose 
upon  foreign  governments  your  misstatements  of 
facts  in  the  South,  but  you  have  also  traveled  out 
of  the  way  to  communicate  through  the  letter  to 
Mr.  Dayton,  the  mere  opinions  and  sentiments 
of  the  Government  at  Washington  to  oppose  the 
recognition  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  Such 
blunders  and  ignorance  in  diplomacy  were  scarcely 
to  be  expected  from  you.  It  was  to  be  supposed 
that  you  were  at  least  acquainted  with  the  simple 
rules,  to  govern  a  matter  of  ordinary  diplomatic 
routine.  You  have  proved  yourself  another  ex- 
ample that  the  greatly  learned  are  sometimes  not 
above  the  blunders  and  ignorances  of  common 
men.  You  are  another  Gundling — another  great 
light  in  "the  Tobacco  Parliament,"  to  settle  pub- 
lic affairs.  But  it  was  to  be  supposed  that  you 
were,  at  least,  not  more  ignorant  and  thrasonical 
than  Gundlings  generally  are.  It  was  to  be  sup- 
posed that  you  were,  at  least,  aware  that  the 
question  of  the  recognition  of  a  de  facto  Govern- 
ment was  to  be  determined  by  facts,  and  not  by 


I 


LETTER   TO    SECRETARY   SEWARD.         59 

the  opinions  and  views  of  tliat  Government  \vliic]i 
it  had  succeeded.  It  was  to  be  supposed  that  you 
had  the  small  amount  of  knowledge  to  apprehend 
that  the  question  of  the  recognition  of  the  South- 
ern Confederacy  by  Foreign  Powers,  w'as,  for 
them,  a  question  lying  with  the  Southern  people, 
and  having  nothing  to  do  with  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment, that  is  ipso  facto  foreign  to  those  people. 
The  doctrine  that  must  determine  the  recog- 
nition abroad  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  is  so 
simple  and  severe,  that  it  is,  indeed,  astonishing, 
sir,  how  you  could  have  so  mistaken  it  as  to  inter- 
pose the  question  wdth  the  views  and  opinions  of 
the  Lincoln  Government,  as  to  the  reality  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy.  The  question  has  nothing 
to  do  with  these.  It  is  one  of  fact,  and  that  fact 
simply  the  determination  whether  the  new  Gov- 
ernment sustains  itself,  and  is  recognized  and 
obeyed  tuitldn  the  limits  of  the  jurisdiction  it 
claims.  It  matters  not  whether  it  is  a  revolu- 
tionary Government;  it  matters  not  whether  it  is 
contested  by  a  former  regime  ;  it  is  sufficient  that 
it  is  recognized  and  obeyed  by  its  oivn  peoiole^  and 
performs  steadily  among  them  the  regular  func- 
tions of  a  Government. 


60         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

To  recommend  a  new  Government  for  recog- 
nition abroad,  it  should  assureilly  fulfil  these  con- 
ditions— that  is,  be  found  in  steady  exercise  of 
governmental  functions,  and  be  acknowledged  and 
obeyed  within  the  limits  of  its  local  jurisdiction. 
Beyond  those  lim.ts  the  inquiry  ceases.  It  is  the 
obedience  of  its  own  people  that  essentially  makes 
tlie  Govei-nment,  It  is  not  necessary,  sir,  to  refer 
for  these  plain  doctrines  of  recognition  to  the  prece- 
d.mts  of  general  history,  or  to  the  recent  illumi- 
nation of  the  whole  subject  in  Europe  by  the 
Italian  question.  Our  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence finds  for  us  the  jus.  powers  of  Government 
in  ^^  the  consent  of  the  governed." 

But  without  looking  back  now  to  the  distin- 
guished examples  of  history  as  to  the  recognition 
of  de  fac'o  Governments,  you  might  at  least,  sir, 
refi-esh  your  mind  by  teachings  so  recent  as  those 
of  the  real  statesman  who  was  but  one  remove 
your  predecessor  in  the  high  office  which  you  now 
encumber  with  j^our  pompous  ignorance.  I  refer 
to  the  doctrines  declared  by  jNIr.  Marcy  on  the 
Nicaragiian  question,  as  establishing  for  our  own 
Govei-nraent  the  most  recent  and  strictly  defined 
precedent  for  the  recognition  of  powers  de  facto, 


LETTER   TO     SECKETART    SETVATtD.         61 

and  doing  so  by  putting  the  whole  question  on 
the  simple  doctrine  of  the  reality  and  of  the 
acknowledgment  of  the  new  Government  by  the 
consent  of  the  people  composing  it. 

Such,  sir,  are  at  once  the  guides  and  the  assur- 
ances for  the  recognition  of  the  Soutliern  repub- 
lic. I  will  not  be  led  now  into  the  discussion  of 
their  truth  or  probability.  I  liave  not  written 
for  the  purpose  of  a  general  discu-sion  of  the 
doctrine  of  recognition,  but  onl}'  to  show  you,  sir, 
how  the  plainest  outlines  of  that  doctrine  have 
been  violated  by  your  false,  intermeddling  advices 
to  the  Governments  of  Europe.  Be,  at  least,  sir, 
truthful  and  decent  in  your  zeal  for  Mr.  Lincoln's 
Government.  Be  serious,  sir :  restore  ^^oui'self 
to  the  society  of  third-rate  politicians:  do  not  dis- 
gi'ace  them  by  having  your  falsehoods  and  cheats 
too  plainly  detected!  Cease  your  busy  misrepre- 
sentations to  Foreign  Governments — cease  your 
boastful  assurances  of  Abraham  Lincoln'.s  "one 
Government  and  one  Nation" — cease  your  dis- 
semination of  the  views  of  a  Government,  which 
no  longer  has  any  jurisdiction  of  a  case  that  is 
given  to  the  judgment  of  the  world:  and  be 
satisfied  for  justice  and  decency  alike  to  leave  the 


62    LETTEKS  OF  THE  SOUTHEEN  SPY. 

question  of  the  recognition  of  the  new  Govern- 
ment in  the  South,  where  it  belongs  by  history, 
by  precedent,  and  by  right — to  the  impartial 
ascertainment  of  the  state  of  facts  existing  within 
the  limits  it  has  appointed  for  its  own  jurisdiction. 
I  am,  sir,  &c., 

THE    SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER    TO   THE    PKESIDENT.  63 


VII. 

LETTER  TO  THE  PRESIDENT. 

Maryland,  May  30,  1861. 
To  the  President  of  the   United  States: 

Sir:  The  course  of  despotism  is  that  of  rapid 
and  aggravated  progression.  Commencing  with 
doubtful  claims  of  power,  it  hurries  to  plain  usur- 
pations of  it,  and,  at  last,  seizes  the  sceptre  of 
absolute  authority.  In  little  more  than  a  month, 
your  course,  sir,  has  illustrated  the  rapid  steps  of 
despotism  from  its  first  unlawful  act  to  the  last 
extremity  of  the  usurpation  of  power.  The 
catena  is  complete.  You  commenced  with  a 
proclamation  of  war  against  the  South.  What 
have  you  done  since  ?  You  have  more  than  quin- 
tupled the  army  in  disregard  of  the  provinces  of 
Congress.  You  have  strangled  the  liberties  of 
the  people.  You  have  caused  the  military  arrest 
of  citizens  in  jurisdictions  where  the  Federal 
Courts   have   been    in    uninterrupted   operation. 


64    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

You  have  caused  their  house  to  be  searched,  and 
blank  warrants  to  be  distributed  for  inquisitions. 
Youhave  suspended  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus.  You 
have  administered  to  the  army  and  civil  officers 
of  the  Government  a  new  and  altered  oath  of 
allegiance.  You  have  broken  the  sanctity  of 
private  correspondence,  seizing  the  despatches 
preserved  for  years  in  the  telegraph  offices.  You 
have  violated  the  right  of  the  people  to  keep  and 
bear  arms,  robbed  even  the  public  authorities  of 
arms  in  their  possession,  and  of  their  purchase, 
and  denied  the  right  of  a  State,  still  remaining 
in  the  Union,  to  continue  the  privileges,  which 
the  Constitution  has  named  and  provided  as 
"necessary  to  a  free  State."  A  State  remaining 
in  the  Union  is  no  longer  free.  A  citizen  remain- 
ing in  the  Union  is  no  longer  free:  he  is  subject 
to  arrest,  by  military  process;  to  search,  at 
pleasure ;  to  espoinagc,  even  in  his  private  corres- 
pondence; to  imprisonment,  without  recourse  to 
the  courts;  to  tests,  whenever  you  choose  to  exact 
them  ;  and  to  deprivation  of  arms,  whenever  your 
power  may  be  thought  to  slacken,  or  your  coward- 
ice may  happen  to  be  shaken  by  alarms. 

Such,  sir,  is  but  a  hasty  grouping  of  the  acts 


LETTER   TO   THE   PRESIDEISTT.  65 

by  which  you  have  violated  both  the  wisdom  and 
the  law  of  the  Constitution,  and  erected  a  throne 
of  despotism  in  your  frightened  capital.  But  the 
character  of  a  despot  is  not  completed  by  mere 
violations  of  law.  There  are  violations  of  honor, 
morality  and  truth,  more  infamous  than  excesses 
of  authority.  It  is  of  these,  sir,  that  I  would 
tell  you  as  gloriously  crowning  you  with  a  com- 
plete despotism — of  these  that  I  would  remind 
the  country,  as  staining  you,  beneath  the  gauds 
of  the  robe,  with  the  very  dregs  of  infamy. 

The  present  stage  of  the  war  dcvelopes  two  facts 
which  happening  close  together,  at  once  expose 
and  complete  its  policy.  We  see,  first,  the  false 
tokens  of  your  Government  to  the  world :  next, 
its  betrayed  pretences  to  its  own  citizens. 

While,  sir,  your  Government  was  attempting  to 
amuse  Europe  with  misrepresentations  of  the 
present  war  as  a  local  mutiny,  it  was  giving  the 
lie  to  itself,  and  repeating  it  at  every  step  in  its 
own  line  of  policy  at  home.  You  had  assumed 
to  estabhsh,  as  against  the  South,  a  blockade,  a 
severely  belligerent  and  punitive  right,  at  the 
same  time  that  you  protested  against  the  recog- 
nition of  the  South  as  a  belligerent.     You  insisted 


66    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

upon  the  denial  to  the  South  of  a  right  that  your 
own  belligerent  position  towards  her  had  called 
out.  Not  only  this,  you  insisted  upon  the  ex- 
cision of  the  right  of  privateering  from  the  South 
that  your  own  Government  had,  in  1856,  ex- 
pressly reserved  for  the  very  occasion  in  which 
the  South  assumed  to  exercise  it,  namely,  to  sup- 
ply the  deficiency  of  a  naval  power. 

You  were  caught,  sir,  in  your  own  inconsist- 
encies. It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  very 
right  your  Government  had  laid  the  foundation 
for  in  its  own  position  of  belligerent,  and  that 
it  had  preserved,  as  a  careful  tradition  of  its  own 
policy,  was  to  be  denied  to  the  South  by  the 
world,  only  for  the  interest  and  benefit  of  your 
own  Government.  That,  sir,  would  have  been  a 
degree  of  stultification  and  of  subservience  to 
your  purposes,  that  you  had  no  right  to  expect 
from  the  world.  Your  supreme  commands  at 
home,  and  the  absolute  fawning  obedience  of  a 
lickspittle  and  hungry  constituency  have  encour- 
aged you  to  rather  too  high  a  dictation.  Do  not 
fret  yourself,  sir,  with  false  expectations.  Do  not 
imagine  that  the  world  will  surrender  its  consci- 
ence to  you  because  Yankeedom  has  done  it;  that 


LETTER   TO    THE    PRESIDENT.  67 

it  -will  accept  your  falsehood  and  despotism,  be- 
cause "  the  Northern  unit"  thinks  it  truth  and 
valor  and  honesty;  and  that  it  -will  listen  un- 
questioningly  to  your  maxims  of  public  law,  be- 
cause ''the  great  North"  thinks  and  licks  them 
over  as  sweet  morsels  of  wisdom,  and  anoints 
them  with  the  slime  of  its  own  grovelling  passions. 

Do  not  be  illogical,  sir.  Do  not  mistake  the 
sentiments  of  Illinois  for  the  opinion  of  Europe. 
You  have  disgraced  yourself  and  the  great  North 
enough  already  by  the  dancing  and  shuffling  policy 
of  your  Premier  towards  the  Governments  of 
Europe. 

Your  blockade  of  the  Southern  coasts  is  already 
despised;  it  cannot  be  maintained.  England  and 
France  are  determined  to  have  their  cotton,  to- 
bacco and  naval  supplies  from  the  seaports  of  the 
South.  A  line  of  such  extent,  with  the  numer- 
ous inlets  on  the  coast  from  the  James  River  to 
the  Savannah,  could,  in  the  nature  of  things,  by 
no  application  of  the  naval  force  at  your  com- 
mand, be  blockaded.  Equally  vain  with  the  at- 
tempt to  maintain  a  blockade,  on  such  a  line,  con- 
stantly and  vigilantly  assailed  by  the  whole  com- 
merce of  Europe,  will  be  your  attempt,  sir,  to 


68         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOUTHERN    SPY. 

resist  the  public  ackno^vlc(lgment  and  exercise  of 
the  right  of  privateering  on  the  part  of  the  South 
— a  right  which  was  conceded  to  Greece  in  her 
revolt,  and  to  the  South  American  republics  in 
their  struggle  for  independence,  and  which,  I  re- 
peat, was  retained  by  your  Government  in  ex- 
press and  permanent  terms.  The  precedents  of 
the  Government  at  Washington  will  be  turned 
against  itself.  "  The  militia  of  the  seas"  will 
destroy  the  commercial  and  navigating  interests 
of  the  North ;  they  will  scour  the  South  Pacific 
as  well  as  other  oceans  of  the  world;  they  will 
penetrate  into  every  sea,  and  will  find  as  tempting 
prizes  in  the  silk  ships  of  China  as  in  the  gold- 
freighted  steamers  of  California.  The  reversion 
upon  your  Government,  sir,  of  its  own  maxims  of 
public  law  is  only  needed  to  complete  the  ruin  of 
the  North,  not  only  in  her  commercial  interests, 
but  in  the  immediate  issues  of  the  present  war. 
The  negation  of  the  right  of  search  will  estop 
you  from  discovering  contraband  goods  under  the 
neutral  flag  of  England  or  of  France.  It  will 
leave  the  trade  in  contraband  as  free  as  any  other. 
A  moment's  reflection  will  show  you,  sir,  that  the 
fixed  precedents  and  cherished  traditions  of  your 


LETTER   TO    THE    PEESIDENT.  69 

own  Government  have  only  to  be  completely 
turned  against  itself  by  the  world,  to  reduce  it 
to  the  most  miserable  imbccibility,  and  its  people 
to  their  knees,  and  the  deploring  there  of  their 
own  self-purchased  destruction.  The  question 
alone  remains,  whether  this  complete  reversion 
will  be  made ; — and  this  question  I  am  satisfied  to 
leave  to  the  justice  and  to  the  interest  of  the 
European  Powers,  when  both  these  motives  are 
conjoined  and  harmonized,  to  determine  their 
action. 

Heartily,  sir,  do  I  give  thanks  that  the  ambi- 
tious falsehood  you  sought  to  introduce  into  your 
foreign  policy,  on  the  subject  of  the  present  war, 
has  not  only  been  disappointed  of  its  end,  but 
has  introduced  a  new  element  of  controlling  im- 
portance into  this  war.  This  element,  which  you 
have,  unluckily  for  yourself,  introduced,  I  believe 
to  be  almost  vital  and  decisive.  It  will  subordi- 
nate a  controversy,  which  you  hoped  to  keep  in 
your  own  hands,  and  within  the  narrow  restric- 
tions of  Mr.  Seward's  Yankee  statesmanship,  to 
the  public  law  and  the  public  opinion  of  the 
world.  These  are  enduring,  far-reaching,  and 
ultimately  decisive   powers.     Falseness   and  ag- 


70         LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

gression,  sir,  in  the  war  you  are  waging,  can  only 
be  fatal  to  yourself.  As  abroad,  the  same  policy 
has  brought  you  into  difficulties,  so,  at  home,  it 
■will  surround  and  destroy  you.  As  the  falsehood 
by  which  you  sought  to  entrap  the  conscience  and 
judgment  of  Europe  has  come  back  with  retribu- 
tive justice,  so  the  falsehood  of  your  policy  at 
home  will  recoil  and  strike  back  upon  yourself. 
The  exposure  of  your  policy  to  the  world  is  suf- 
ficiently found  in  your  intermeddling  in  Europe: 
it  is  seen  at  home,  now,  and  in  the  light  of  day, 
in  your  invasion  of  Virginia. 

This  act,  sir,  has  completed  the  infamy  of  your 
character.  You  have  perpetrated  it  against  all 
promises  and  pledges;  you  have  multiplied  by  it 
lalsehood  on  falsehood;  you  have  put  imagination 
on  the  rack  to  perceive  what  limit  there  can  be 
fixed  to  your  unscrupulousness,  or  what  bounds 
set  to  a  mendacious  Government.  Pretext  has 
been  exchanged  for  pretext,  until  the  country, 
sir,  has  actually  been  bewildered  at  your  enormous 
resources  of  falsehood.  If,  from  all  the  slough 
of  your  proclamations,  the  mess  of  words  you 
called  an  Inaugural,  and  the  confused  nonsense  of 
your  speeches,  official  and  unofficial,  one  distinct 


LETTER   TO    THE    PEEStDENT.  11 

proposition  was  drawn  bj  the  country,  it  was  that 
you  would  not  make  an  aggressive  war  upon  the 
South.  You  defined  for  yourself  the  meaning  of 
such  a  war,  when,  in  your  wayside  speech  at 
Indianapolis,  you  essayed  a  distinction  between 
repossessing  the  forts,  &c.,  in  the  South,  and  in- 
vading its  territory,  the  latter  of  which  only  you 
esteemed  to  be  war  in  its  aggressive  sense.  Have 
you  forgotten  that  distinction,  sir?  Th6^  country 
has  only  to  look  back  upon  it  to  discover  your 
flagrant  falsehood.  Can  you  not  cure  it,  sir,  by 
some  new  distinction — some  new  pretext,  so  as  to 
bring  this  invasion  of  Virginia  under  the  terms 
of  the  Indianapolis  speech,  and  the  proclama- 
tions and  manifestoes  of  a  later  date  ?  Can't  the 
adept  Premier  help  you  to  a  new  logic,  or  a  new 
falsehood? — or  was  he  too  plainly  discovered  in 
his  ingenious  ways  by  Judge  CampMl,  when  the 
Judge,  the  equal  of  Mr.  Seward  in  political 
position,  twice  charged  him  with  "  overreaching 
and  equivocation,"  and  he,  the  great  representa- 
tive man  of  the  great  North,  twice  slunk  u|tD 
silence  under  the  charge? 

Those,  sir,  who  are  committed  to  support  you 
in    all  things,  and  to  all  extremities,  are  easily 


72         LETTERS    OP   THE    SOUTHERN    SPY. 

satisfied  with  explanations  for  every  inconsistency 
or  outrage  you  may  choose  to  enact.  Address 
yourself  to  these  creatures,  sir.  You  can,  per- 
haps, explain  to  them  that  you  have  seized  Alex- 
andria to  reclaim  her  as  part  of  the  District  of 
Columbia ;  you  can,  perhaps,  parade  to  them  a 
pretext  that  you  have  been  called  into  Virginia, 
"to  protect  Union  men;"  you  may,  perhaps,  con- 
vince thofm  that  Alexandria  is  one  of  "the  places" 
of  the  Government  within  the  purview  of  the 
war  proclamation;  you  may  possibly  even  per- 
suade the  hang-mouthed  lisieners  on  your  wisdom 
and  bravery,  that  there  is  some  old,  strange  claim 
of  the  Government  to  be  revived  to  the  odd-named 
Newsport-Newspoint  at  the  mouth  of  the  James 
River.  As  there  are  sometimes  no  limits  to  the 
mendacious  utterances  of  a  man,  so,  sometimes, 
there  appear  to  be  none  to  the  servile  acquies- 
cence of  fanatics  and  flatterers. 

Virginia,  and  the  honest  world  that  regard  her, 
sir,  need  not  another  word  from  you.  Both 
understand  you.  You  would  repeat  upon  her 
your  easy  conquest  of  Maryland,  seize  her  rail- 
roads, step  by  step,  plant  her  with  your  troops, 
and   then   lay  your   strangling    grasp   upon  her 


LETTER    TO    THE    PREvSIDENT.  73 

liberties.  The  falseness  of  policy,  sir,  super- 
animates  the  energy  to  oppose  it.  Your  treachery 
has  inspired  all  the  vital  forces  of  Virginia  to 
compass  your  ruin,  and  directed  all  the  scorn  of 
the  world  to  accomplish  your  infamy. 

Filthy  with  falsehood,  covered  with  treachery 
as  with  a  garment,  you  will  be,  at  once,  expelled 
from  Virginia,  as  by  a  sword  of  fire,  and  be 
driven  from  the  honest  conversations  of  the  world, 
as  a  leprous  despot,  shunned  and  yet  marked, 
hated  at  id  yet  despised.  The  world,  sir,  has  not 
yet  outgrown  the  feelings  which  the  inspired  ac- 
counts of  the  first  invader  of  man's  kingdom  of 
peace  were  intended  to  inspire.  It  is  not  likely 
to  forget  them — not  likely  to  be  unreminded  of 
the  old  story  of  the  Serpent,  in  the  false  words, 
subtle,  gliding  invasions,  and  anfractuous  policy 
of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

Without  a  word  of  premonition,  against  all 
promises  and  all  expectations,  in  the  night  time, 
while  the  stars  of  the  approaching  rtorning  alone 
watched  in  the  sky,  you  glided  into  Virginia, 
silently  and  beautifully  as  a  serpent  in  his  slime 
and  glittering  scales.  Let  it  be  so !  Let  the 
serpent  coil  himself  strongly !      "  The   wisest  of 


74         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

beasts,"  he  is  yet  not  the  strongest.  There  are 
talons  to  fight  him,  to  strip  him,  and  to  tear  his 
writhing  folds  between  heaven  and  earth,  as  his 
golden  scales  fall  one  by  one  in  the  sunshine,  up 
which  the  eagle  flies  with  his  prey. 

I  am,  &c., 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER   TO   THE   KEY.   DR.  TYKG.  75 


VIII. 

LETTER  TO  THE  REV.  DR.  TYNG  OF  NEW  YORK. 

Baltimore,  1861. 
Br.  jS.  a.  Tyng: 

Sir:  Your  office  admonishes  me  to  address  you 
respectfully.  Be  pleased,  sir,  however,  to  distin- 
guish between  the  respect  which  I  readily  give  to 
your  office,  and  that  which  I  must  be  studious  to 
withhold  from  your  person. 

Sir,  you  are  a  minister  of  the  gospel.  May 
our  Almighty  Father  in  Heaven  pardon  me,  if  I 
say,  in  any  other  than  the  deepest  humility  and 
distrust,  that  I,  too,  am  a  member  of  His  Church 
on  earth,  and  a  suppliant  at  the  throne  of  His 
mercy. 

Religion  may  have  its  military  ideas,  sir ;  they 
are  ideas  of  necessity,  not  of  wrath.  It  may  be 
proper,  it  may  be  dutiful,  though  unwelcome,  in 
a  Christian  man,  sometimes  to  speak  harshly,  to 
chastise  falsehood,  and  to  let  loose  his  wrath  upon 
evil  men.     In  connections  with  the  secular  press, 


76         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERTq-   SPY. 

I  may  have  spoken  with  severity.  I  claim  the 
right  to  use  it  against  bad  men  in  high  places, 
murdering  my  country  or  betraying  it.  But,  sir, 
even  the  Language  of  just  denunciation,  I  wouki 
restrain  against  you,  a  priest  of  the  church ; — 
but,  understand,  sir,  not  that  I  esteem  you  less 
false  or  murderous  than  the  politicians  ^Yhom  you 
serve,  but  because  you  are  clothed  in  an  office, 
holy  and  venerable  in  itself,  however  wretched 
and  abandoned  the  man  it  may  cover.  The 
apostle  was  sorry  to  have  denounced  the  whited 
Pharisee,  who  would  have  stopped  his  words  with 
blows,  because  he  "wot  not  that  he  was  the  high 
priest." 

I  will  endeavor  to  write  cahnly;  but  I  will  not 
be  satisfied  to  write  less  than  truthfully. 

Some  time  ago,  sir,  in  making  a  hasty  journey 
into  the  North,  in  which  I  was  enabled  to  observe 
mutely,  but  narrowly,  the  sentiments  and  the 
signs  of  that  section,  there  was  put  into  my  hands 
a  New  York  paper  of  your  own  persuasion,  con- 
taining a  report  of  a  Sunday  sermon,  delivered 
by  you  before  the  Bible  Society,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  presentation  of  Bibles  to  the  troops  enlisted 
for  war  upon  the  South.     I  will  not  foul  my  sheet 


LETTEH    TO     THE    REV.    DR.    TYNG.         11 

with  the  name  of  this  paper;  and  I  deem  it 
equally  unnecessary,  sir,  to  assoil  it  by  the  ex- 
tended report  of  your  extraordinarily  vile  remarks 
on  this  sabbatical  occasion. 

You  were  not  satisfied  to  name  my  country- 
men, and  your  "brethren"  (to  use  the  fondling 
term  of  the  old  poisoning  hypocrisy  of  the  North,) 
as  ^^pirates;''  you  condemned  them  to  a  fate,  at 
which  demons  only  could  rejoice;  you  consigned 
them  to  nameless  horrors,  and  declared  your  belief 
that  ^^the  Bible  ivould  singe  and  scald  their  pol- 
luted hands!''  There  were  Northern  troops 
standing  around  you  in  the  clamor  and  passion 
for  blood.  They  cheered  you,  sir.  You  replied 
that  '-^they  ivere  worthy  of  the  Bible:''  in  the 
animation  that  their  shouts  inspired,  you  ex- 
claimed, "  how  their  names  will  glisten  in  glory/" 
You  boasted  of  your  own  prowess  in  the  work  of 
death.  You  declared,  in  tlie  bloody  bravery  and 
dialect  of  a  murderer,  that,  as  to  the  rebellious 
Southerners,  "YOU  ivould  shoot  them  down  as 
mad  dogs!" 

I  shuddered  to  read  such  speeches,  sir.  But 
the  horror  of  my  feelings  I  cannot  describe,  as  I 
continued  to  read  what  else  fell  from  ministerial 


78         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOUTHERN    SPY. 

lips,  poisoned  -with  sickening  shouts  for  blood. 
You  spoke  of  the  regiment  of  one  "  Billy  Wilson," 
composed,  as  is  notorious,  of  the  thieves,  coster- 
mongers,  "fighting  men"  and  murderers  of  New 
York.  In  rather  strangely  clerical  phrase,  and 
in  a  language  which  I  had  thought  confined  to  the 
petting  endearments  of  the  Bowery,  you  referred 
to  them  as  ''■rare  birds."  You  spoke  of  their 
prowess.  You,  sir — jou,  an  officer  of  God's 
church,  to  administer  its  comforts,  and  to  teach 
its  great  mystery  of  salvation  in  fear  and  trem- 
bling, "  ventured  to  say,"  that  the  salvation  of 
these  abandoned  men  might,  probably,  be  obtained 
"by  the  consecration  they  had  made  of  them- 
selves!" In  the  report,  there  is  an  interpolation 
of  "cheers"  at  the  promise. 

Great  God,  sir,  is  it  possible  that  such  aAvful, 
mocking,  flippant,  demon  blasphemy  should  be 
uttered  in  the  name  of  His  church,  and  of  His 
blessed  Son,  who  "taketh  away  the  sins  of  the 
world,"  and  the  utterer  live  on  unconsumed  by 
the  Divine  vengeance ! 

Sir,  I  promised  you  no  words  of  denunciation. 
There  can  be  none  such  for  this. 

By  the  way,  sir,  you  took  occasion  to  remark 


LETTER   TO     THE    KEY.    DE.    TYKG.         19 

to  your  Avild  auditors,  that  you  had  "served 
eighteen  years  of  your  ministry  in  Virginia."  Is 
this  really  true?  You  will  pardon  me  for  ques- 
tioning it,  not  only  after  the  expressions  of  your 
desires  for  the  drenching  of  this  State  in  blood,  but 
because,  sir,  of  your  total  unlikeness,  in  every 
appearance,  to  all  I  have  ever  seen  of  the  clergy 
in  Virginia.  Certainly,  you  have  retained  but 
little  of  the  simplicity  of  the  clerical  manners  of 
the  South.  You  are  known  to  be  a  "fashionable 
preacher,"  sir,  over-fond  of  the  sumptuousness 
and  delicacies  of  your  house,  and  of  keeping 
great  company  around  you.  This  class  of  clergy 
must  have  been  extinguished  in  Virginia  when 
you  left  it. 

To  shift  further  comments  on  your  Bible-Society 
sermon,  sir,  and  to  avoid,  for  a  moment,  feelings 
which,  while  I  dwell  upon  it,  I  must  confess  to  be 
both  indignant  and  distressful,  I  will  tell  you  of  a 
little  experience  of  my  own  among  the  Episcopal 
clergy  of  the  South. 

In  last  winter,  sir,  on  a  rapid  visit  into 

a  portion  of  the  South,  I  passed  one  of  the  most 
wholesome  and  pleasant  episodes  of  my  life.  On 
an  occasion^  which   I  need   not  particularize,  I 


80         LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

stopped  at  the  house  of  an  okl  and  beloved  digni- 
tary of  our  church,  ^Yhose  piety,  Christian  scholar- 
ship and  venerable  years,  are  matters  of  fame 
and  respect  throughout  the  whole  country.  I  had 
seen  so  much  abroad,  at  least,  of  the  fine  living 
and  ostentations  of  the  superior  ranks  of  the 
clergy,  that  when  I  approached  the  neighbour- 
hood of  this  Nestorian  diocesan  of  the  Episcopal 
Church,  I  naturally  amused  myself  with  fancying 
the  mode  of  my  reception,  in  what  I  thought 
would  be  some  splendid  mansion  filled  with  im- 
posing displays  of  comforts  and  luxuries,  and 
offering  only  a  stiff  and  aristocratic  welcome  On 
the  part  of  its  lordly  occupant.  Never,  sir,  w^ere 
delusions  more  entirely  dispelled. 

As  I  alighted  at  the  porch  of  a  farm-house,  at 
once  studiously  plain  and  studiously  tasteful,  a 
bent  figure,  with  white  locks,  came  out  to  meet 
me.  His  eyes  were  the  most  gentle  I  ever  recol- 
lect to  have  seen;  there  was  a  deep,  clear  peace 
in  their  expression,  that  at  once  subdued  and 
charmed.  Ilis  voice,  as  he  bade  me  welcome, 
had  the  music  of  gentle  and  benevolent  old  age. 
The  room  into  which  I  was  conducted  was  both 
parlor  aud  study,  and  I  looked  in  vain  for  one 


LETTEE   TO   THE    REV.   DR.   TYNG.        81 

evidence  of  luxury  to  mark  the  rank  of  the  great 
scholar  and  Episcopalian.  It  was  as  bare,  but  as 
perfectly  neat  as  the  worn  and  carefully  brushed 
suit  of  black  in  which  he  was  clothed.  The  floor 
of  the  room  was  uncarpeted,  though  it  was  the 
depth  of  winter;  the  furniture  was  scanty,  it 
would  have  been  almost  nothing  on  taking  out 
the  immense  book  cases  that  covered  portions  of 
the  walls ;  a  common  deal  chair,  with  a  writing 
leaf,  that  the  venerable  man  afterwards  told  me 
was  a  relic  of  his  college  days,  was  placed  in  the 
chimney-corner,  and  near  it  a  large  velvet-furred 
cat,  evidently  a  pet,  purred  in  the  delight  of  the 
warm  corner,  and  reached  to  the  caresses  of  her 
master. 

In  this  simple  home  I  found  the  learned  and 
evangelical  Christian,  whose  name  was  venerated 
in  all  parts  of  the  Union.  The  plainness  and 
gentleness  of  his  life  won  my  instant  esteem ;  and 
a  religious  conversation,  inexpressibly  sweet,  com- 
pleted the  charms  of  his  character. 

My  visit  happened  to  be  during  the  critical 
times  of  the  sessions  of  the  Peace  Congress  in 
Washington,  when  Virginia  was  exerting  herself 
with  the  greatest  power  and  urgency  for  the  safety 


82         LETTEES    OF   THE    SOUTHERN   SPY. 

of  the  Union.  Never  shall  I  forget  the  friction 
and  warmth  of  the  feelings  of  my  venerable  host, 
as  he  dwelt  upon  the  last  existing  hope  of  the 
maintenance  of  the  Union.  He  paced  the  room 
in  the  excitement  of  his  feelings.  A  noble  flush 
would  lighten  up  his  aged  features,  as,  at  each 
palise  in  his  walk,  he  would  declare  how  "noble" 
it  was  in  Virginia  to  strive  as  she  was  striving 
for  the  Union  of  our  forefathers,  and  how 
"proud"  he  was  of  the  Old  Dominion  in  her 
Christian  and  national  mission.  He  hoped  and 
prayed  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union :  he 
deplored  the  recklessness  of  the  North  in  this 
respect ;  but  not  one  word  of  enmity,  or  of  tem- 
per, or  even  of  exaggerated  speech  fell  from  his 
lips.  Sir,  you  cannot  wonder  that  I  was  struck 
by  the  example  of  such  a  life.  When,  long  be- 
fore daybreak,  I  prepared  to  set  out  to  meet  the 
train  on  the  railroad,  I  found  my  venerable  host 
already  up  before  me,  having  built  his  own  fire, — 
a  custom,  which,  at  nearly  eighty,  I  learn,  is  still 
regular  with  him  at  dawn — and  when  I  shook 
hands  with  him  in  the  dark  at  the  gate,  with  the 
flakes  of  a  snow  storm,  which,  he  quietly  braved, 
scattering  themselves  over  his  venerable  person^ 


LETTER   TO    THE    REV.    DR.    TYNO.        83 

I  felt  that  I  liad  parted  with  one  of  those  ex- 
traordinary okl  Christian  soldiers,  clothed  in  the 
apostolic  graces  of  all  courage  and  all  gentleness. 
Noble,  beloved,  venerable  soldier  of  the  Cross  ! 
Distressed,  tossed  and  beaten  about  as  my  own 
life  may  be,  I  feel  that  I  can  ever  look  back 
upon  that  peaceful  old  man  with  an  inspiration  of 
love  and  prayer  for  his  long  continuance  in  the 
sweet  conversations  of  his  life,  and  in  the  dear 
service  of  Christ. 

Many  months  had  elapsed,  sir,  between  this 
singular  visit  in  the  South  and  my  perusal,  on 
the  waters  of  the  Hudson,  of  your  Sabbath  oration 
on  the  war  that  had  already  broken  out.  I 
turned  the  pages  of  the  New  York  paper  in  which 
I  read  it.  On  one  of  the  pages  I  caught  the  title 
of  some  other  religious  remarks  on  the  existing 
war.  They  bound  me  with  their  beauty;  they 
expressed  and  breathed  a  Christian  charity,  that 
I  had  yet  found  in  no  treatment  by  laity  or  clergy 
of  the  unhappy  war;  they  insisted  upon  the  stern 
and  unwelcome  duty  of  the  writer's  State,  cast 
out  of  the  Union,  as  it  were,  to  resist,  with 
Christian  manliness,  the  war  thrust  upon  her; 
but  they  called  yet  for  every  limit  of  forbear- 


84         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOrTHERN   SPY. 

ance,  they  invoked  charity,  they  expressed  all 
abhorrence  of  blood,  they  plead  the  charities  as 
well  as  the  duties  of  the  terrible  emergency.  I 
hastened  to  find  the  signature  to  these  at  once 
courageous  and  gentle  remarks,  uttered  so  evi- 
dently in  the  moving  and  tender  spirit  of  our 
holy  religion.  It  was  the  name  of  the  venerable 
host,  who  had  so  welcomed  me,  and  taught  me 
new  examples  of  life.  It  was  the  diocesan  report 
of  the  Right  Rev.  William  Meade,  Bishop  of  Vir- 
ginia ! 

Sir,  I  will  say  no  more.  I  will  not  wound  you 
with  the  contrast.  Promise  only  to  read  these 
noble  remarks,  to  repeat  them  to  the  North:  and 
then,  confronting  them  with  your  own  words  of 
bloody  zeal,  the  two  may  stand,  the  two  must 
stand  to  be  judged  not  only  in  the  sober  second 
judgment  of  men,  but  in  the  sight  of  God,  "not 
in  the  words  which  man's  wisdom  teacheth." 
With  respect  for  "the  priest," 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER   TO    GENERAL   SCOTT.  85 


IX. 
LETTER  TO  GENERAL  SCOTT. 

Maryland,  July  3,  18GI. 
Lt.   G-en'l   Winfield  Scott,  ^c,  ^c,  ^c. 

Sir:  Some  persons  who  depreciate  your  great- 
ness, declare  that  your  vanity  is  so  excessive  that 
it  even  rejects  the  sympathy  of  your  friends.  I 
allow  myself  to  doubt  this;  and  I  refuse,  sir,  to 
pass  by  your  misfortunes  without  condoling  with 
them. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  shame  that  you,  sir,  ''an  old 
soldier,"  and,  as  your  admirers  so  justly  say,  one 
of  the  greatest  Captains  of  the  age,  sliould  be 
subjected  to  the  infamous  doubts  of  Northern 
papers,  as  to  your  military  prowess,  and  even  to 
egging  annoyances  of  the  Cabinet,  because  you 
have  delayed  to  start  on  your  triumphal  career  to 
Richmond.  Who,  sir,  is  the  intermeddler  in  the 
Cabinet  that  will  insist  upon  prying  into  and  an- 
noying your  plans  of  military  wisdom  ?     Is  it  the 


86        LETTERS    OF   THE   SOUTHERN    SPY. 

pragmatical  spirit  of  Montgomery  Blair  that 
gives  you  this  annoyance — or  the  curiosity  of 
''the  little  woman"  from  Illinois?  Speak  out, 
sir.  Let  the  people  know  who  dares  to  question 
or  confront  the  wisdom  of  him,  "who  has  passed 
his  whole  life  in  the  service  of  his  country." 

Do  not  allow  the  Northern  papers  to  wound 
your  vanity.  Do,  sir,  as  many  great  men  have 
had  to  do — console  yourself  with  your  own  reflec- 
tions of  your  greatness.  If  you  have  not  yet 
"shelled"  Richmond,  or  overrun  Virginia,  or 
captured  "Mr."  Joiferson  Davis — whose  life,  by 
the  way,  you  might  have  taken  once,  had  it  not 
been  for  your  unfortunate  "wounds"  from  a  fiiU 
down  stairs,  which  prevented  you  from  accepting 
the  risks  of  the  d2iello — why  has  the  country 
been  so  unjust  as  to  have  forgotten  that  you  have, 
at  last,  assuaged  Mr.  Lincoln's  personal  fears, 
and  gained  a  victory  in  the  "moral  results"  of 
every  conflict  that  has  yet  happened  !  And  what 
deeds  have  you  not  enacted  on  your  sofa  in 
Washington,  despite  the  pangs  of  the  gout — 
what  brilliant  strategies  have  you  not  pointed  out 
with  the  long  reed  with  which  you  have  reached 
from  your  sick  couch  to  your  military  maps — and 


LETTER   TO    GENERAL    SCOTT.  87 

what  important  assurances  have  you  not  sent, 
from  day  to  day,  to  the  White  House,  that  "no- 
body was  hurt!" 

The  North,  sir, — and  even  Mr.  Montgomery 
Blair,  are  ungenerous  only  because  they  are  igno- 
•rant.  They  do  not  know  your  plans;  they  mis- 
took them  for  the  easy  and  cheap  expedient  of 
marching  to  Richmond,  and  planting  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  in  Capitol  Square.  You  have  disdained 
such  easy  victories:  you  have  matured  a  more 
brilliant  plan,  and  the  country  only  depreciates 
it,  because  it  docs  not  know  it. 

Do  you  not  recollect,  sir,  when  a  mutual  friend 
in  your  private  room  lately  urged  to  you  to  dis- 
close your  plans  to  him,  what  you  said  to  him  in 
reply.  He  asked  how  you  proposed  to  subdue 
"the  rebels."  With  knit  brows,  you  opened 
your  wide  hand,  and  slowly  and  tightly  closed  it. 
The  emphatic  and  eloquent  reply  needed  no 
words.  You  proposed,  with  one  broad  grasp,  to 
crush  and  strangle  the  miserable  traitors.  How 
grand  such  a  plot  of  warfare — how  much  better 
than  an  easy  march  to  Richmond — how  worthy 
of  the  applause  of  the  North,  if  it  had  only  im- 
agined the   existence  in   your   mind   of  a  plan 


88    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN"  SPY. 

SO  comprehensive,  so  brilliant,   and  so  satisfac- 
tory ! 

Sir,  you  have  concealed  your  wisdom.  The 
North  has  misapprehended  you,  the  Cabinet  have 
not  been  taken  into  your  confidence ;  and  they 
have  censured  you,  only  through  mistake.  Re-* 
trieve,  sir,  your  misfortunes ;  afford  to  the  North, 
and  to  the  Government,  an  opportunity -io  recall 
their  misjudgments,  and  to  ascribe  to  you  the 
hosannas  of  their  praise.  You  will  soon  have  the 
one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  troops  in  Vir- 
ginia in  your  tightened  and  deadly  grasp.  You 
will  easily  strangle  them  all.  The  North  has  only 
to  be  patient,  and  you,  sir,  can  still  afford  to  be 
insolent  to  the  Government,  and  asperous,  as 
ever,  to  all  vulgar  inquisitors. 
I  am,  &c., 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


LETTER   TO  EDWAED  EVERETT.  89 


LETTER  TO  EDWARD  EVERETT. 

Maryland,  July  .  .  .  .  ,  1861. 

To  Mr.  Edivard  Everett: 

Sir:  There  are  several  kinds  of  falsehood. 
There  is  the  open  and  direct  falsehood;  it  is 
known  in  vulgar  society  as  the  lie,  and  is  applied 
generally  to  men  who  are  coarse  and  unartificial 
in  their  statements.  Then  there  is  the  genteeler 
falsehood  by  implication  ;  it  is  called  by  milder 
terms  than  the  lie,  only  because  it  lacks  its  vulgar 
simplicity.  Lastly,  sir,  there  is  still  a  more 
finished  and  educated  kind  of  falsehood,  that  as- 
sumes the  appearance  of  truth,  and  that  some- 
times uses  the  most  elegant  arts  and  the  highest 
polish  to  engage  belief.  I  will  not  denominate 
the  order  of  this  last  kind  of  falsehood.  How 
well  I  might  be  able  to  illustrate  it  in  comments 
on  the  terse  expression  that  he  who  "  lies  like 
truth  most  truly  lies" — for  decent  reasons,  believe 
me,  sir — I  forbear  to  essay.     I  am  not  fond  of 


90    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHEKN  SPY. 

vulgarities;  I,  generally,  discard  them  from  my 
lexicon;  and  I  certainly  shall  endeavour,  sir,  not 
to  wound  your  fine  taste  by  inelegant  words. 

Permit  me,  sir,  rather  to  share  in  your  own 
fastidious  elegances  of  style ;  and  in  declining 
credence  to  the  statements  of  your  lately  pub- 
lished letter  on  the  war,  addressed  to  a  gentle- 
man of  Virginia,  to  testify  how  much  it  reads  ^'like 
truth,"  and  with  what  art  and  polish  it  is  arranged. 
With  this  commencement,  sir,  which  you  are,  no 
doubt,  too  much  accustomed  to  flattery  to  value  as 
highly  as  is  intended,  permit  me  to  proceed  to  dissent 
from  some  of  the  views  of  your  letter  referred  to. 

It  is  not  strange,  sir,  that  you  should  begin  the 
statements  of  your  letter  with  a  compliment  to 
yourself.  This  is  sometimes  a  common  habit  of 
great  men.  You  assert  that,  until  recently,  you 
"  sustained  the  South  at  the  almost  total  sacrifice 
of  influence  and  favor  at  home."  I  am  not  aware 
that  this  fact  is  as  generally  known  as  you  presume 
it  to  be.  What  have  you  done  for  the  South?  I 
ask  for  information,  sir.  Of  course,  I  am  not 
disposed  "to  argue  myself  unknown;"  I  aru  not 
ignorant  of  you,  sir.  I  know  that  you  wrote  and 
recited  over  the  country  a  very  flowery  oration  on 


LEITER  TO  EDWARD  EVERETT.  91 

the  pater  patrice; — I  hear  that  your  eloquence 
never  fails  of  feminine  admiration; — I  am  ap- 
prised that  yoa  are  a  Latin  and  Greek  scholar, 
acquainted  with  many  of  the  modern  tongues, 
and  famous  for  the  elegance  of  your  language ; — 
I  have  seen  it  abundantly  advertised  that  you 
"wrote  for  the  New  York  Ledger," — I  have  read 
the  celebrated  classic  letter  which  you  signed, 
offering  the  tenderest  sympathy  to  Senator  Sum- 
ner for  his  chastisement  in  the  Senate  at  the 
hands  of  a  Southerner,  whom  you  eloquently  de- 
nominated as  brute  and  assassin; — I  am  told 
that  you  have  made  innumerable  Fourth-of-July 
speeches  ;  that  you  are  a  great  orator,  that  you 
can  commit  the  longest  speeches  to  memory,  that 
you  have  all  the  rules  and  artifices  of  eloquence 
at  your  fingers  ends ; — and  I  am  even  reminded 
of  your  matchless  trick  of  eloquence  in  having 
once  bribed  a  waiter,  at  a  dinner  at  Faneuil  Hall, 
to  leave  a  small  miniature  flag  sticking  in  a  pyra- 
mid cake  by  your  plate,  that  in  the  speech  ex- 
pected from  you,  you  might  take  it  up  by  a  sort 
of  dramatic  surprise,  and  hold  it  aloft  to  match 
your  peroration  in  an  apostrophe  to  the  Stars  and 
Stripes.     Pardon  me,  sir,  for  mentioning  so  small 


92         LETTERS    OF   THE    SOLTDHERN   SPY. 

a  circumstance.  Even  small  things  are  interest- 
ing of  the  great.  You  cared  for  the  flag  only  to 
match  a  figure  of  speech  in  your  oration ; — and 
even  beyond  this  petty  episode  of  a  patriotic  din- 
ner, let  me  beg  you,  sir,  to  take  care  that  you 
have  not  given  more  important  hints,  that,  as  a 
literary  man  of  too  much  artifice,  you  have  been 
fond  of  employing  the  sentiments  and  symbols  of 
patriotism  as  mere  dramatic  elements,  with  no 
feeling  higher  or  worthier  in  their  use  than  that 
of  heightening  your  eloquence,  or  adding  to  the 
graces  of  your  composition. 

I  will  not  return  to  question  what  you  have 
done  for  the  South.  Grant,  sir,  that  you  have 
done  wonders  to  "sustain"  her.  You  say  that 
you  have  done  so  "at  the  almost  total  sacrifice  of 
influence  and  favor  at  home."  Unfortunately,  in 
this  expression,  sir,  you  are  too  intent  upon  prais- 
ing yourself  to  apprehend  the  conclusion  it  im- 
plies. This  conclusion  can  only  be,  that  the 
Northern  people  have  been  "almost  totally"  op- 
posed to  the  rights  of  the  South,  and  that  those 
who  have  sustained  them  have  done  so  at  the 
loss  of  "influence  and  favor."  This  is  an  im"- 
portant  confession,  and  as  logical  as  it  is  import- 


LETTER  TO  EDWAED  EVERETT.  95 

ant.  I  would  not  hurt  your  vanity,  sir,  especially 
after  you  had  helped  me  to  so  important  a  fact. 
But  could  the  South,  sir,  think  it  sufficient  to 
repair  the  confession  you  make  of  the  general 
hostility  of  the  North  towards  her,  that  you  sus- 
tained her!  How,  too,  sir,  does  this  confession 
consist  with  the  after-declaration  of  your  letter 
that  the  South  was  fully  protected  in  the  Union? 
W.ere  you,  sir,  the  North — were  you  to  give  that 
protection,  without  "influence  and  favor  at  home" 
— were  you  to  assure  the  sustaining  of  her  by 
the  recitation  of  the  Washington  oration,  or  the 
aid  of  Ledger  literature,  or  the  resources  of  new 
and  even  more  dramatic  inventions  of  rhetoric  ? 
I  will  not  deny  that  you  are  a  great  man,  sir;  I 
am  only  constrained  to  suggest  that  you  too 
greatly  value  your  services. 

I  pass  to  the  statement  next  in  order  in  the 
studied  composition  of  your  letter.  You  assert 
that  you  were  well  aware,  partly  from  facts  "with- 
in your  personal  knowledge,''  of  the  existence  of 
a  conspiracy  of  thirty  years  standing,  among 
Southern  politicians,  to  rupture  the  Union ;  and  you 
add,  that  "  the  slavery  question  was  but  a  pretext 
for  keeping  up  agitation  and  rallying  the  South!" 


94        LETTEES    OF   THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 

This,  sir,  is  too  serious  a  matter  of  news  to  be 
treated  by  me  in  any  other  than  the  most  serious 
style.  Is  it  possible,  sir,  that  you  have  so  long 
been  guilty  of  the  misprision  of  the  treason  of 
this  conspiracy,  or  of  that  part  of  it  within  your 
personal  knowledge,  divulging  so  grave  and  trea- 
sonable tews  neither  to  the  Government  nor  to 
the  country!  You  have  criminally  concealed 
facts  that  you  profess  made  you  acquainted  with 
the  inceptive  steps  of  the  conspiracy  in  the  South 
that  you  now  believe  Mr.  Lincoln  to  be  right  in 
scourging  as  "rebellion."  How  far  removed  is 
such  conduct,  sir,  from  "treason,"  in  view  of  the 
Northern  definitions  of  that  term,  and  the  late 
seizure  of  telegraphic  dispatches  to  discover  men 
as  traitors,  who  knew  of  the  conspiracy,  with 
which  you  now  boast  an  early  personal  acquaint- 
ance? 

But  there  is  still  another,  even  more  painfully 
glaring  inconsistency  in  your  statement  quoted 
above.  This  statement  follows  just  after  your 
boast  of  sustaining  the  South,  and  in  it,  you  style 
the  slavery  question  but  a  pretext  for  agitating  and 
rallying  its  people.  If  you  did  sustain  the  South, 
sir,  I  do  not  conceal  my  gratification  at  this  circum- 


LETTER   TO  EDWARD  EYEREIT.  95 

Stance ; — but,  however  I  might  delight  in  observ- 
ing Northern  men  standing  up  in  defence  of  the 
rights  and  guarantied  institutions  of  the  South,  I 
would  certainly  be  sorry  to  see  any  one  of  them 
sustaining  a  people  on  an  issue,  which  he  might 
hereafter  confess  to  be  a  pretext,  or  giving  his 
support  to  any  cause  at  the  expense  of  honesty. 

Briefly,  sir,  on  the  confessions  of  your  own 
statement,  did  you  act  patriotically,  according  to 
your  present  standard  of  patriotism,  in  so  long 
concealing  your  "personal  knowledge"  of  the 
Southern  conspiracy: — or  did  you  act  any  more 
honestly  in  sustaining  the  South  when  you  were 
convinced  that  the  question  of  protecting  her 
institutions  was  but  a  pretext,  and  a  mere  element 
to  vitalize  her  conspiracy  against  the  Union  ?  It 
would  be  a  needless  and  harsh  gratuity  for  me, 
sir,  to  answer  these  questions.  It  might  betray 
me  into  an  offensive  plainness  of  style,  that  might 
be  thought  vulgar,  in  its  applications  to  a  highly 
educated  conscience  like  your  own.  You,  cer- 
tainly, have  the  fastidiousness  of  language  to  give 
nicer  answers  to  such  questions  than  a  plain  man 
too  much  accustomed  to  call  things  by  their  right 
names. 


96    LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

I  pass,  sir,  to  that  portion  of  your  letter  more 
particularly  applicable  to  the  present  emergencies, 
and  which  is,  in  fact,  the  gist  of  your  communi- 
cation. You  admit  that,  up  to  the  time  of  the 
possession  of  Fort  Sumter  by  South  Carolina,  it 
was  your  opinion  that  if  the  seceded  States  were 
"determined  to  separate,  we  had  better  part  in 
'peace.''  You  cannot  do  less,  sir,  than  make  the 
admission  of  this  your  former  opinion;  you  had 
busied  yourself  too  much  in  notifying  it  to  the 
country,  to  deny  or  to  conceal  it  noAv.  You  are 
left  to  hunt  a  pretext  for  the  very  sudden  con- 
version of  your  policy  of  peace  to  your  present 
stimulations  of  a  coercive  war,  and  you  pretend 
to  find  it  in  the  old  and  worn  excuse  of  the  attack 
on  Sumter.  In  one  sense,  the  excuse  is  merely 
ridiculous.  But  it  covers  too  deep  a  meaning  to 
be  dismissed  so  lightly.  Whenever  men  are  found 
making  excuses  for  changes  of  opinion,  irrational 
and  opposite  to  facts,  you  may  depend  upon  it, 
sir,  that  they  are  rather  seeking  to  save  their 
hypocrisy  from  too  great  an  exposure  than  to  en- 
lighten their  motives  to  others.  The  Sumter  af- 
fair has  afforded  to  thousands,  in  the  North,  a 
most  flimsy  and  false  excuse  for  loosing  passions 


LETTER    TO  EDWAED  EVERETT.  97 

of  hate  against  the  South  that  had  all  along  been 
festering  in  the  concealments  of  their  hearts. 
That  event  suddenly  convinced  them  that  the 
South  was  really  resolved  to  separate;  it  discon- 
certed their  hopes  and  plans  of  seducing  her  back 
into  the  Union  by  false  and  temporizing  speeches ; 
it  utterly  disappointed  the  Northern  expectation 
that  the  South  was  not  really  in  earnest,  and  that 
"all  would  come  out  right"  by  a  little  hypocrisy 
and  affectation  on  the  Nothern  side;  it  snapped 
as  a  rotten  net,  their  vile  and  cheap  schemes  of 
getting  the  South  back  into  the  Union  by  art  and 
deceit;  and  men,  finding  no  longer  any  purpose 
for  concealment,  threw  aside  their  former  pro- 
fessions, quickly  determined  to  coerce  what  they 
could  not  cozen.  This,  sir,  is  the  whole  explana- 
tion of  the  Northern  "reaction"  at  the  occur- 
rence at  Sumter. 

But  permit  me  to  examine  a  little  closely  what 
you  say  of  this  moving  event.  I  give  you,  sir, 
the  benefit  of  a  full  quotation,  with  italics  of  my 
own. 

It  was  my  opinion  that,  if  they  [the  Cotton  States] 
would  abstain  from  farther  agf!;ression,  and  were  deter- 
mined to  separate,  we  had  better  part  in  peace.    But  the 


98    LETTEBS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

wanton  attack  on  Fort  Sumter  (which  took  place,  not  from 
any  military  necessity,  for  what  harm  was  a  single  com- 
pany, cooped  up  in  Charleston  harbor,  able  to  do  to  South 
Carolina?  but  for  the  avowed  purpose  of  "stirring  the 
blood"  of  the  South,  and  thus  bringing  in  the  Border 
States),  and  the  subsequent  proceedings  at  Montgomery, 
have  wholly  changed  the  state  of  affairs.  The  South  has 
levied  an  unprovoked  war  against  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  the  mildest  and  most  beneficent  in  the  world, 
and  has  made  it  the  duty  of  every  good  citizen  to  rally  to 
its  support. 

The  excuse  of  tlie  Sumter  attack  has  served 
other  parties  beside  yourself,  sir,  as  a  convenient 
handle  for  hypocrisy  and  falseness.  To  be  used 
as  such,  of  course,  it  has  to  be  put  into  a  con- 
venient shape  of  words.  You  speak  of  it  as  "a 
wanton  attack."  How  wanton  on  the  part  of  the 
South — how,  even,  evitable  on  her  part,  when 
the  Administration  made  the  direct  challenge, 
which  the  South  had  forewarned  the  Government 
at  Washington  that  it  would  be  constrained  to 
accept?  This  is  a  simple  question,  sir;  but  it 
presents,  I  am  persuaded,  the  whole  issue  of  the 
Sumpter  complication,  and  severely  indicates 
where  the  responsibility  for  the  collision  lies. 

There  is   a  very  wretched  argument  in  your 


LETTER    TO  EDWARD  EVERETT.  99 

statenent  above,  which,  wretched  as  it  is,  permit 
me  to  reverse  against  yourself.  You  say  that 
there  was  no  "military  necessity"  for  the  posses- 
sion of  the  fort  by  South  Carolina,  as  it  was  able 
to  do  her  no  harm.  Then  pray,  sir,  in  what  re- 
spect greater  was  the  military  necessity  for  the 
Government  to  retain  it,  if  it  was  so  powerless  to 
control  or  to  affect  the  seceded  State  ? 

It  was  no  question  of  military  necessity.  The 
Government  at  Washington  wanted  the  fort  as  an 
appanage  of  its  sovereignty.  So  did  South 
Carolina.  And  its  possession  by  the  latter,  sir, 
was  but  the  incident  of  the  separation  you  say^ 
you  had  recommended !  It  was  but  the  logical 
and  legitimate  conclusion  of  your  own  policy! 
Why  should  you  complain  that  South  Carolina 
should  be  in  possession — and  even  bloodless  pos- 
session— of  the  fort,  which  very  fact  is  but  the 
essential  and  inevitable  carrying  gut  of  your  own 
early  recommendation  of  her  sep^irate^overeignty  I 

I  am  sorry,  sir,  that  you  are  so  poor  a  logician. 
Is  it  possible  that  a  letter,y6onta,j4iing  such  rub- 
bish as  the  above,  was,  a^'the  editors  excused  it, 
"written  without  thougl^t  of  its  publication"  (al- 
though it  is  a  little  re;oarkable  that  the  copy  of 


100   LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

a  private  letter,  written  to  a  gentleman  in  Virgi- 
nia, should  find  its  way  back,  through  all  the 
interruptions  of  the  mails,  to  a  paper  in  Boston.) 
Excuses  may  be  readily  made  for  weak  fallacies 
in  a  literary  man,  or  even  in  a  contributor  to  "  Bon- 
ner's Ledger,"  who  affects  a  logical  style.  I  give 
you  the  benefit  of  such  excuses.  But  can  there 
be  any,  sir,  for  wilful  and  open  misstatements  of 
facts  ? 

I  had  hoped  to  discover  no  such  undisguised 
committals  in  your  letter,  satisfied,  when  I  com- 
menced to  read  the  opening  of  it,  that  there  would 
be  no  falsehoods  in  it  that  would  not  be  polished  by 
your  scholarship,  or  covered  by  the  elegant  arts  of 
your  &\>j\e.  I  am  disappointed  in  one  paragraph. 
There,  unfortunately,  sir,  you  have  descended  to 
that  vulgat  openness  and  directness  which  I  had 
occasion  to  t;ondemn  at  the  commencement  of  this 
letter.  You  have  amused  yourself  by  making 
one  single  paragraph  a  clot  of  falsehoods. 

You  say  that  "the  accredited  leaders  of  the 
Republican  party,  including  the  President-elect, 
uniformly  pledged  themselves  to  that  effect,"  name- 
ly, 'Ho  remove  all  sincere  alarm,  on  the  part  of 
the  South,  that  their  constitutional  rights  were 


LETTER   TO  ED  WARD  EVERETT.  101 

threatened:'  You  add,  "that  the  two  houses,  by 
a  constitutional  majority,  pledged  themselves,  in 
like  manner,  against  any  future  amendment  of  the 
constitution  violating  the  rights  of  the  Souths' 
When,  sir,  did  Abraham  Lincoln  ever  give  such 
pledges?  What  more  did  the  two  Houses  of  Con- 
gress do  than  to  declare  in  favor  of  an  amend- 
ment that  only  re-affirmed  the  Constitution  not  to 
abolish  slavery  in  the  States,  which  had  the  oppo- 
sition of  sixty  Kepublicans  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives? To  call  such  gratuitous  legislation  as 
this  concession  and  security  to  the  South,  is  but 
to  add  insult  and  wantonness  to  misrepresentation. 
There  is  one  excuse,  sir,  which  you  make  for 
the  conversion  of  your  former  position  looking  to- 
wards peace,  to  your  present  warlike  attitude  that 
is  so  entirely  personal,  that  I  shall  treat  it  with 
becoming  brevity.  You  say,  "when  General 
Beauregard  proceeds  to  execute  his  threat,  his 
red  hot  cannon  balls  and  shells  will  not  spare  the 
roof  that  shelters  my  daughter  and  four  little 
children  at  Washington,  nor  my  own  roof  in 
Boston.  Must  I,  because  I  have  been  the 
steady  friend  of  the  South,  sit  still,  while  he 
is  battering  my  house  about  my  ears?" 


102   LETTERS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  SPY. 

Your  excuse,  sir,  seems  to  be  faithfully  copied 
from  Abraham  Lincoln's  anxious  pleas  for  the 
safety  of  his  person.  Do  not  be  alarmed,  sir. 
Nerve  yourself  to  resist  the  magnetic  influences 
of  the  royal  fears  of  President  Lincoln.  Recom- 
mend your  friends  to  do  the  same,  before  the 
whole  North  is  shaking  in  unison  with  the  daily 
tremblings  of  the  occupant  of  the  White  House. 
The  terrible  General  Beauregard,  ''•with  his  red 
hot  cannon  halls  and  shells,"  will  scarcely  harm 
you,  especially  as  you  have  engaged  his  mercy  in 
advance,  by  attesting  in  the  same  breath,  in  which 
you  exclaim  your  fears  of  him,  what  a  "steady" 
friend  vou  have  been  of  the  South !  I  conp^ratu- 
late  you  on  so  early  supplications  for  safety.  I 
would  assure  your  fears,  sir.  But,  really,  so 
strongly  are  they  expressed,  that  in  concluding 
this  letter,  I  must  confess  to  be  in  doubt,  sir, 
whether  I  shall  leave  you  to  suffer  more  from  the 
disorders  of  your  conscience,  or  the  visions  which 
distress  you  of  the  dreadful  Beauregard,  with  his 
"red  hot"  implements  of  war. 

In  ending  these  lines,  it  is  due  to  make  one 
explanation.  The  task  of  a  writer  is  petty  and 
unworthy  to  answer  arguments  so  vapid  as  those 


LETTER   TO  EBWAED  EVEEETT.  103 

just  passed  in  review.  Understand  then,  sir,  that 
I  have  noticed  your  letter  only  because  it  was  the 
production  of  a  man  holding  a  certain  public 
position  that  was,  in  itself,  not  beneath  notice. 
Permit  me  thus  to  dismiss  you.  Your  public 
position  is  not  important  enough  to  warrant  any 
further  correspondence. 

I  am,  &c., 

THE   SOUTHERN   SPY. 


THE  BOOK  FOR  THE  TIMES. 

BLACK  DIAMONDS. 

[  Second  Edition.] 

Characterized,  by  the  leading  presses  of  the  country,  as 
the  best  book  ever  published  on  the  Society  of  the  South. 
Kead  the  notices  of  the  press. 

**  SLAVE  LIFE  IN  THE  SOUTH."* 

In  general  we  are  strongly  averse  to  mixing  up  special 
questions  in  ethics,  or  in  politics,  vpith  what  is  called  polite 
literature.  Artistically  viewed,  we  doubt  whether  the 
mixture  is  ever  allowable.  Even  satiric  poetry  we  take  it, 
forms  no  exception  to  the  rule  ;  for  it  is  the  province  of 
that  species  of  literature  to  attack  wickedness  and  folly 
from  the  standpoint  of  admitted  maxims  of  morality  and 
wisdom,  not  to  agitate  debatable  or  unsettled  problems. 
The  introduction  into  the  novel  or  poem  of  subjects  per- 
taining to  strict  polemics,  or  to  severe  philosophy,  as  the 
main  purpose  of  the  work,  produces  an  incongruous  asso- 
ciation, which  is  never  agreeable  and  is  often  disgusting. 
\^ho  wants  to  read  a  novel  designed  to  illustrate  the 
beauties  of  free  trade  or  a  protective  tariff?  Who  does 
read  Montgomery's  maudlin  poem,  or  Longfellow's  senti- 
mental cant  in  rhyme,  on  the  awful  sin  of  negro  slavery? 

*  From  the  Neiv  Orleans  Delta.  Editorial. 

6 


11  BLACK   DIAMONDS. 

Since  V  e  publication  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  which  led  the  van  of  a  frightful  procession  of 
books  of  a  similar  order  on  both  sides  of  the  slavery 
question,  every  reader  of  experience,  taste,  and  discrimi- 
nation, is  predisposed  to  turn  with  loathing  from  any  issue 
from  the  press  whose  title  pa,^e  has  a  perceptible  squint- 
ing toward  the  vexed  and  vexatious  subject.  lie  is  in- 
clined to  avoid  it  as  a  premeditated  bore  and  deliberate 
swindle — a  delusion  and  a  snare — a  cunning  "dodge," 
by  which  he  may  be  made  the  victim  of  self-inflicted 
twaddle.  Of  course  there  is  frequently  much  matter  of 
pith  and  moment  in  the  i:umerous  books  in  which  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  slavery  question,  in  all,  or  a  few  of  its 
aspects,  is  thrown  into  the  shape  of  stories  or  sketches. 
Indeed,  there  are  some  that  touch  the  subject  in  a  way  so 
incidental  and  natural,  and  with  so  little  of  a  partisan  or 
disputatious  spirit,  that  if  the  predisposition  against  them 
be  once  overcome,  they  may  be  read  with  equal  entertain- 
ment and  instruction. 

Among  the  last  productions  to  which  we  allude,  we  un- 
hesitatingly place  a  small  and  unpretending  volume,  being 
a  series  of  short  sketches  of  slave  life  in  the  South,  in  the 
form  of  letters  originally  addressed  by  the  author,  Edward 
A.  Pollard,  of  Washington  City,  to  his  friend,  David  M. 
Clarkson,  of  Newburgh,  New-York. 

The  author  appears  to  be  a  thorough  Southerner  in  edu- 
cation, opinion,  sympathy,  and  attachment;  yet,  his  let- 
ters are  remarhahly  free  from  secimial  prejudice  and 
acerhity,  and,  in  truth,  contain  sketches  that  are  amongst 
the  most  Catliolic,  and  tolerant,  and  genial,  we  ever  had 


NOTICES    OF   THE    PRESS.  HI 

occasion  to  peruse.  He  would  seem  to  have  traveled 
much,  to  have  observed  much,  and  to  know  much  of 
various  countries  and  peoplos.  But  the  negro  nature  he 
especially  knows,  profoundly,  intimately ;  knows  it,  not 
by  intellection  merely,  but  also  by  heart ;  knows  it,  not 
through  the  cold  light  of  ethnological  science  only,  but 
most  of  all,  through  the  warm,  enkindling  recollections  of 
boyhood  and  youth.  The  negro,  who,  in  his  true  nature, 
is  always  a  boy,  let  him  be  ever  so  old.  is  better  understood 
by  a  boy,  than  by  a  whole  academy  of  philosophers,  unless 
the  boy  element  in  the  said  philosophers  is  unusually  long- 
lived  and  prosperous.  The  author,  in  this  case,  guided 
by  his  boy-knowledge  of  the  negro,  cannot  misconceive  or 
untruthfully  delineate  him.  How  appreciative,  how  lov- 
ing, how  tender  and  sympathetic  he  is  in  his  delineations, 

we  will  let  a  few  extracts  show. 

*  -:f  *  *  -x-  ^ 

From  the  Neio-  York  News. 
Mr.  Pollard,  of  Virginia,  is  a  Southern  gentleman  of 

the  true  stamp.     He  knows  human  nature  well We 

can  promise  all  an  ample  reward  for  che  cost  and  trouble 
of  an  acquaintance  with  the  contents  of  this  most  inter- 
esting book.  The  letters  are  so  many  jewels  in  their  way 
— black  by  the  subject,  but  brilliantly  lightsome  in  it.  It 
is  a  little  mine  full  of  promised  diamonds.  Go  and  dig 
deep  within  its  limits  and  be  satisfied. 

Frovi  Be  Boio's  Review. 
It  abounds  in  incidents  of  Southern  slaves  and  masters, 
illustrating,  very  happily,  the  patriarchal  relation  which 


IV  BLACK    DIAMONDS. 

subsists  between  the  races  of  the  South,  and  defending  the 
institution  more  than  all  argument,  from  the  assaults  of 
ignorance  or  prejudice. 

From  the  Mobile  Register. 

They  are,  beyond  doubt,  the  most  life-like  delineation^ 
of  the  negro  ever  drawn  with  the  pon.  The  work  is  origi- 
nal in  its  conception,  and  on  its  first  publication,  in  the 
form  of  detached  letters  to  a  Northern  friend,  attracted 
no  little  attention,  and  must  have  efi'ected  much  good  in 
free  labor  regions.  It  will  I  e  read  with  interest  at  the 
South  also,  and  we  trust  that  our  section  will  not  forever 
deserve  the  reproach  of  despising  its  own  literary  talent, 
and  discouraging  the  treatment  of  the  subjects  which  pon- 
cern  it  most. 

From  the  Lynchhurg  Virginian. 

Mr.  Pollard  describes  the  negro — his  habits,  his  affec- 
tions, his  religion,  his  aspirations — not  from  hearsay,  as 
do  most  writers,  but  from  actual  observation  of,  and  asso- 
ciation with  him.  Reared  in  Virginia,  he  displays  that 
knowledge  of  negro  character  which  can  only  be  gained 
from  seeing  him  in  his  appropriate  sphere — a  laborer  upon 
a  Southern  plantation.  It  is  the  best  portrait  of  the 
Southern  slave  we  have  ever  seen  drawn. 


A  BRILIIAXT  AND  SPLEPID  SOlTIIEIiX  BOOK. 

In  Press  and  will  be  ready  Dec.  lOlli. 

CAUSE  and  CONTRAST;  an  Essay  on  the  American  Crisis. 

By  T.  W.  MacMahon. 
Which  ve  will  publish  in  a  few  days.  We  do  not  hesitate 
to  aver — for  it  has  been  so  pronounced  by  competent  and 
distinguished  critics — that  this  is  among  the  most  compre- 
hen^ivt',  brilliant,  scholarly,  charming,  able  and  conclusive 
books  that  has  yet  appeared  in  exposition  of  Southern  politi- 
cal philosophy.  Its  matter  is  eiudite  and  profound,  and  the 
style  in  which  i  is  compo>ed  is  rarely  rivalled.  While 
blending  the  earliest  transactioys  of  men  with  tjiose  of  the* 
present,  it  is  as  fascinating  as  any  novel — a  wonc  truly  suit- 
able for  both  sexes;  for  the  student  and  the  people.  In 
amplitude  of  illustration  it  is  rich,  classical  and  elegant;  and 
its  logic  is  invincible. 

The  following  are  commendations  by  gentlemen  who  read 
portions  of  the  manuscript: 

From  the  Richmond  Whig. 
"  It  discusses,  with  rare  ability  and  learning,  the  institution 
of  slavery  in  all  its  aspects,  as  well  as  the  social  and  political 
distinctions  between  the  people  of  the  Confederate  States 
and  those  of  the  U.  S.  The  style  is  ornate,  gl<  wing  and 
eloquent.  We  predict  that  it  will  produce  a  sensation;  take 
its  place  among  standard  literature;  and  have  the  etfect  of 
banishing  from  our  midst  the  hurtful  oftVpring  of  the  morbid 
and  prolific  press  of  the  North." 

From  the  Dispatch. 
*'VVe  have  read  portions  of  the  MSS..  and  we  pronounce 
it  beMtitil'ul,  excellent,  and  conclusive.      We  hope  that  it  will 
obtain  the  circulation  that  it  merits,  not  only  in  America,  but 
in  Europe." 

We  might  continue  similar  extracts  from  the  Examiner, 
Charleston  Mercury,  and  o  her  jourials,  if  space  permitted. 
The  work  wid  be  ready  in  a  few  days;  one  octavo  volume, 
pica  type,  and  published  at  one  dollar,  with  the  usual  dis- 
count to  the  trade. 

Orders,  to  receive  prompt  attention,  should  be  addressed  to 
WEST  &  JOHNSTON,  Publishers, 

145  Main  street,  Richmond,  Va. 


^■^ 


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Cause  and  Contrast,  an  Essay  on  the  American  Crisis, 
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nence of  the  Institution  of  Slavery. 


